Philip Schiller, senior vice president of marketing at Apple Inc., talks about the new voice control function of the Apple iPhone 3G S (3GS)

Apple Inc.’s developer conference Monday gave investors a new opportunity to see the company at work without Steve Jobs.

The absence of Jobs let Apple make the case that the company is built on more than one man, said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis. Jobs, 54, is scheduled to return to Apple at the end of the month, though some investors expected him to make an appearance Monday.

“What they’re trying to get away from is his iconic role,” Munster said after attending the two-hour keynote speech at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. “Having him present would have just fueled that perception.”

Jobs went on leave Jan. 14 after announcing that a hormone imbalance was “robbing” him of the proteins he needed to stay healthy, causing him to lose weight throughout 2008. He handed day-to-day duties to operating chief Tim Cook, saying he would stay involved in major strategic decisions. Jobs, who co-founded Cupertino, California-based Apple in 1976, had delivered the keynote speech at the developers’ event every year since 1998.

Apple rose 0.6 percent to the equivalent of $144.71 at 10:44 a.m. yesterday in Germany, from the close of $143.85 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading Monday. The shares, which have risen 69 percent in the US this year, fluctuated in January as Apple gave details of Jobs’s health and announced his medical leave.

‘Calmed investors’

Jobs, who founded Apple at the age of 21 with Steve Wozniak, turned Apple into a household name in 1984 with the Macintosh, offering a simple-to-use, point-and-click interface unlike anything consumers had seen before. In recent years, he’s changed the music industry with the iPod player, which became a springboard to enter the mobile-phone industry with the iPhone.

“We look forward to Steve returning at the end of June,” Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, said Monday.

Instead of seeing Jobs, the roughly 5,200 attendees watched a presentation by marketing chief Phil Schiller, who also appeared at the Macworld conference in January. Schiller, a 12-year Apple veteran, was joined by iPhone chief Scott Forstall and Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president for software.

“They’ve now elevated a lot of their senior executives into positions of visibility, and I think it’s really calmed investors in the process,” said Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New York. “It’s no longer the Steve Jobs company – Apple has shown they have a much greater bench strength than just one person.”

Palm Pre

Schiller used the appearance to present faster, lower-priced MacBook Pro laptops. He also showed off the new iPhone 3G S, which runs applications and opens Web pages up to twice as fast as the year-old iPhone 3G. Two versions of the iPhone 3G S will go on sale in the US on June 19, with prices starting at $199 for a 16-gigabyte model.

Apple also will continue to sell the 8-gigabyte iPhone 3G, offering it for $99 – half its old price.

The new phones may help Apple fend off fresh competition from Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and Palm Inc.’s Pre. Palm introduced the Pre on June 6, touting the speed of its software as a selling point.

Apple has sold more than 40 million iPhones and iPod Touch media players. There are now more than 50,000 software applications, or apps, available for the devices.

‘Difficult price point’

“From an investor perspective, the $99 price for iPhone 3G was the most important announcement, as it will be an extremely difficult price point for any competitors,” said Michael Obuchowski, chief investment officer at First Empire Asset Management Inc. in Hauppauge, New York. His firm has about $40 million in equity accounts, including Apple shares. “IPhone 3G S is a nice incremental improvement, but short of an exciting one.”

AT&T Inc., the phone’s exclusive US wireless carrier, will offer two-year service contracts for the iPhone 3G S. Apple said it plans to begin selling the new model in more than 80 other countries in coming weeks.

“Customers are going to be blown away with all that it does,” Schiller said of the new phone, which includes a built-in compass and video camera.

The company is also challenging Microsoft Corp.’s new Windows 7 with an updated Mac operating system. The software, called Snow Leopard, will be released in September, the month before Windows 7 comes out. Current Mac users can buy the update for $29.

Some developers attending the conference, which runs through June 12, said they weren’t bothered by Jobs’s absence.

“He has such a great range of lieutenants – they don’t make you miss Steve at all,” said Gautam Godse, software director at Atlanta-based Big Nerd Ranch, a training center for programmers. “It’s good that Steve’s out of the limelight because there’s too much focus on him and not on the products.”

Source: Bloomberg