After last week’s announcement that Steve Jobs is dealing with “more complex” health issues than predicted and that he would retire from CEO position at Apple for five months, analysts try to guess how the company will cope with the situation.

The CEO and co-founder at Apple is allegedly dealing with severe health problems, since his last public appearances were quite striking, as Jobs looked very thin and weakened. This issue generated many rumors about his health condition, since it is a known fact that Steve Jobs is a cancer survivor.

After Steve Jobs announced that he would retire for a few months, he appointed Tim Cook, the company’s chief operating officer, for dealing with “day-to-day” operations.

Because of Job’s statement, stocks at Apple dropped immediately. However, analysts expected this, as they stated that Jobs has traditionally been the company’s public figure and that he was more or less identified with Apple’s plans and future development.

Apple dealt with a similar situation two decades ago, when Steve Jobs left the company after a series of conflicts. Since that moment in 1985, the company didn’t manage to regain its huge popularity but, when Jobs rejoined as CEO in 1997, the future was bright for Apple.

Under Jobs’ lead, the Cupertino-based company had its stocks increased from $3 in 1997 to almost $100 last year, after the release of the iPod and iTunes in 2001, followed by the new line-up of MacBooks and, later, by the iPhone and the iPod Touch, which proved to be huge commercial successes.