Sir Jonathan Ive | MediaGuardian 100 2012
Job: senior vice-president of industrial design, Apple
Industry: digital media
Age: 45
New entry
Sir Jonathan Ive learnt this year that theApple gadgets he designed, including the iPad and the iPhone, have royal status.
Ive was knighted by Princess Anne at Buckingham Palace and afterwards said that the Queen's daughter was a keen user of her own iPad.
Barely three months after Ive's knighthood for services to design and enterprise, Apple was crowned the most valuable company of all time as its market value topped $632bn (£397bn) and has just launched the iPhone 5.
And the Essex-born design guru has played no small part in Apple's phenomenal success.
Ive is Apple's senior vice-president of industrial design, the executive responsible for the look of its Mac computers, Macbook laptops, iPods, iPhones and iPads. He joined Apple in 1992 – 15 years before the arrival of the first iPhone – and reports directly to the chief executive, Tim Cook.
In the iPod and iPhone, Ive oversaw the design of gadgets that irrevocably transformed entire industries. He was also involved in creating Apple's latest device, the iPad, an entirely new category of personal computer.
As design chief, Ive is one of a small number of executives privy to Apple's most closely-guarded product plans. TV executives would no doubt crawl over broken glass to see inside Ive's design studio in Cupertino, where Apple is reputedly testing the product that could reimagine that part of the entertainment industry.
Ive began to lose his reticence this year as he gave numerous media interviews about his design philosophies and aspirations. "Even in high school I was keenly aware of this remarkable tradition that the UK had of designing and making," Ive told the Daily Telegraph ahead of his knighthood. "It's important to remember that Britain was the first country to industrialise, so I think there's a strong argument to say this is where my profession was founded."
His emergence as a public face of Apple has prompted some speculation that he is being lined up as a future leader of the technology giant. But close Apple-watchers insist that this is unlikely given the acumen of several other top executives.