1. In no way wishes him ill health; in fact the opposite.

2. As a CEO 10 years older than Jobs, Seidenberg is tacitly admitting that Jobs has at least another 10 years.

3. Seidenberg is responding that Jobs eventual retirement from Apple gives Verizon a better chance to succeed.

4. Seidenberg probably felt secure enough in making that complement because he wanted to make that point that Verizon could overcome the long-term benefits ATT receives from partnering with Apple on iPhone.

What Seidenberg did not expect from his odd compliment was the way you nailed him on stock performance, Kontra. It shines a light on Seidenberg, and raises the question of whether his age has anything to do with Verizon’s performance. Here the comparisons must be made to Verizon’s industry peers, especially ATT and T-Mobile, for competitors with and without iPhone.

Also, by focussing on the term of CEO careers instead of quarters, he also raises the point about the viability of CDMA over the long term, and whether EVDO and similar CDMA-based 3G technologies are more investments into a dead end. As much as I admire the iPhone for the most significant disruption in the smartphone market since Blackberry, whether and how to move into GSM-based 3G platforms may be the more critical decision for companies like Verizon.

I’m thinking that Verzion CEO might have not necessary referred to Steve Jobs’ health. He might say that Apple’s soul is Steve Jobs, and when Steve gets out of the scene, sooner or later, Apple might be in trouble. This implies that Verzion CEO does not consider himself indispensable to his company’s success. This “Apple is Steve Jobs” statement might be correct or not…

Seidenberg isn’t just clueless… he is clueless AND outspoken. Ever since I watched him blast Bluetooth at the All Things D conference years ago and make a bozo out of himself, I realized the propensity this man has to say asinine things that his handlers need to later retract and clean up for him down the line. He suffers from perpetual foot-in-mouth disease. He should apologize to Jobs if for no other reason that it is just poor form.

Mr. Seidenberg, some advice from Shakespeare and Lincoln… “Better to be silent and thought the fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”

Steve Jobs is the only person I think of in the history of modern technology who has had four mega-hits in Macintosh, iMac, iPod and iPhone that changed their respected industries. So it would be wrong to speculate for Mr. Seidenberg that Jobs could/is likely to get “stale.” Facts just don’t support it.

Check out the recent UCLA conference on regenerative medicine and De Grey’s perspective at the Methuselah Foundation at
http://www.methuselahfoundation.org

Dr. G
http://www.spacesuityoga.wordpress.com

Jobs’ luster has been with us for three decades and will surely shine bright after he’s gone. The same cannot be said of Mr. Seidenberg and his “legacy.”