Apple's iconic chief Steve Jobs has returned to the company after his five months medical leave, ahead of schedule, according to various media reports.
The New York Times report citing a person who saw Jobs at the Apple campus said that 'Jobs was actually at work on Apple's sprawling corporate campus on Monday.'
'However, company representatives did not say whether he had returned permanently,' it added.
Meanwhile, UK daily Financial Times said the company had indicated on Monday that Steve Jobs had returned to Apple as its active chief executive a few days ahead of the scheduled end of his medical leave.
'Apple quoted Jobs and referred to him as the company's chief executive in a press release touting the sales of 1 million next-generation iPhones in their first weekend of availability,' the FT said.
The report noted that it was the first time Jobs had been heard from in his official capacity since January, when he announced that he would need to take time off for unspecified medical issues. The company had not said in what capacity he would return.
Acccording to television channel CNBC, employees at Apple had reported that CEO Steve Jobs returned to work at company's headquarters in California on Monday.
Further, an IT blog All Things Digital also said, media reports claiming Jobs has been spotted at Apple headquarters over the past few days had raised hopes that the CEO may have officially returned to work.
Quoting an Oppenheimer & Co analyst Yair Reiner the FT said: 'This effectively tells us he's back in the job with a backhanded disclosure'.
"The intention here is to try to take Steve Jobs and not make him the lead of the story any more, to really try to refocus the investment community and Apple customers on the products and the expanding group of executives," he said.
However, attributing to governance experts the report said, the board was obliged to say more about Jobs' prognosis and the amount of time and energy he would be able to devote to the company.
Jobs was struck by pancreatic cancer in 2004 and reportedly over the weekend, he had received a liver transplant this year, suggesting that the cancer had metastasized to that organ.
In his absence, the company's chief operating officer Tim Cook had been taking care of the day to day operations.
In January, Jobs had written in a letter to Apple's employees that, 'In order to take myself out of limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.'
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