Agenda Setters: Where are they now... Steve Jobs

As the countdown begins to silicon.com's seventh annual Agenda Setters poll of tech's 50 most influential individuals, it is time to look back at those who held top 10 positions in 2005. Today we catch up with last year's number 2, Steve Jobs.

In 2005 Steve Jobs made yet another appearance in the silicon.com Agenda Setters top 50 and you'd have to be slightly silly to bet against him making the top 10 comfortably once again. He is, after all, Steve Jobs - the black polo-neck wearing beloved head of Apple, the company taken to represent tech's cool face.

Such is the Jobs legend that if he were to announce an Apple-branded egg cup, column inches would follow as surely as night follows day.

That said, it's not been the best year for Jobs. Apple announcements are normally met with slavering screeds from journalists and users alike, yet this year when Jobs gathered the press for the first look at the the iPod hi-fi, even the Mac faithful queried if the company had jumped the shark by getting the Big Man to unveil an accessory - and not an overly exciting one at that. Interestingly, if ever there was evidence of Agenda Setting, it's here: such is the Jobs legend that if he were to announce an Apple-branded egg cup, column inches would follow as surely as night follows day.

While Jobs' last 12 months in power might not have been larded with sexy product launches, there's been some Agenda Setting going on nonetheless. Boot Camp is just one example - getting Microsoft software to run on Apple hardware. A curious one, granted, but you can't accuse Jobs of resting on his laurels.

The company has been leading the way by showing how to roll with the corporate punches, taking a number of public relations knocks - a battery recall, scratch-prone Nano screens, an investigation into the treatment of workers at iPod manufacturing plants, a stock options probe - and yet Jobs and co have come out of it with their Teflon-like image seemingly unstained.

Apple has also been battling with European regulators with mixed success. A French parliamentary battle to outlaw DRM had initially threatened to scupper Apple's business model in the country, although the law eventually passed had fewer teeth than a chicken. Jobs might not be so lucky once the Scandinavian ombudsmen have finished with it, though - although here Apple is leading the fight in an interesting battle of big tech companies vs users' rights, a battleground that will only get fiercer as more content gets moved to digital formats.

If the rumour mill is to be believed - and the Apple spoiler sites are right more often than wrong - the Mac maker could be returning to its winning form within the next 18 months or so. Recently, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer gave the most concrete hint yet that the company is working on the iPhone proper and speculation is giving credence to the arrival of the first touch screen, 'real' video iPod and a full-on movie service, all of which promise to give a jump-start to languishing industries in the same way the iPod breathed life into the music download market.

If Apple gets that right, don't expect Jobs to shift from the Agenda Setters top 10 for some years to come.

silicon.com's Agenda Setters panel, made up again of CIOs, analysts, VCs, consultants, lawyers, academics and other experts, convenes in September with the results revealed at the end of the month. If you want to pass on your comments for our experts - about Steve Jobs or any other contender - drop us an email at editorial@silicon.com.