Apple began selling the iPhone in June 2007. Mr. Jobs’s goal was to sell 10 million of the handsets in 2008, equivalent to 1 percent of the global cellphone market. The company sold 11.6 million.
Although smartphones were already commonplace, the iPhone dispensed with a stylus and pioneered a touch-screen interface that quickly set the standard for the mobile computing market. Rolled out with much anticipation and fanfare, iPhone rocketed to popularity; by the end of 2010 the company had sold almost 90 million units.
Although Mr. Jobs took just a nominal $1 salary when he returned to Apple, his compensation became the source of a Silicon Valley scandal in 2006 over the backdating of millions of shares of stock options. But after a company investigation and one by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he was found not to have benefited financially from the backdating and no charges were brought.
The episode did little to taint Mr. Jobs’s standing in the business and technology world. As the gravity of his illness became known, and particularly after he announced he was stepping down, he was increasingly hailed for his genius and true achievement: his ability to blend product design and business market innovation by integrating consumer-oriented software, microelectronic components, industrial design and new business strategies in a way that has not been matched.
If he had a motto, it may have come from “The Whole Earth Catalog,” which he said had deeply influenced him as a young man. The book, he said in his commencement address at Stanford in 2005, ends with the admonition “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
“I have always wished that for myself,” he said.
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Steve Lohr contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 7, 2011
An earlier version of this obituary misstated the year in which NeXT shifted its focus from the education to the business market as 1986.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 7, 2011
An obituary on Thursday about Steven P. Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, misidentified, in some editions and at one point, the city in California where he went to high school. It is Cupertino, not Los Altos.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 6, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: STEVEN P. JOBS, 1955-2011; Redefined the Digital Age As the Visionary of Apple.
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