NY: Fledgling Apple CEO Tim Cook is doing a better job than his predecessor, company co-founder Steve Jobs, according to a poll of Apple employees.
The poll, conducted by job site Glassdoor.com, gave Cook a 97% approval rating - two points higher than a comparable poll for Jobs.
Cook's rating was for a period from March 2011 to March 2012, compared to a figure for Jobs stretching from March 2010 to March 2011.
Steve Jobs died in October 2011.
Cook has presided over the company during a period of huge growth, seeing the company's market capitalisation soar to levels above $500 billion.
Cook's approval rating was higher than any other technology CEO - ahead of Qualcomm's Paul Jacobs at 95% and Google's Larry Page at 94%.
Blogger Om Malik, who reported the statistic, said, 'To be fair, a 2 percent difference is a pretty small gap - especially when you consider how long Jobs was on the job, and how new Cook is to the position.
'He’s clearly in his honeymoon period, just seven months into his official duties as CEO.'
The approval rating might come as a surprise to workers in Apple's Chinese factories.
Mr Cook visited Apple's Chinese supplier Foxconn this week amid controversy over working conditions in its plants.
This week, a survey of three Foxconn plants and over 35,000 workers in Apple's supply chain, said it had unearthed multiple violations of labor law, including extreme hours and unpaid overtime.
Some workers were reportedly expected to work 76-hour weeks and to work for up to 11 days without a day off.
Apple has had agreed to work with partner Foxconn to tackle wage and working condition violations at the factories that produce its popular products after a report found 'serious and pressing' concerns, in a landmark development for the way Western companies do business in China.
Foxconn - which makes Apple devices from the iPhone to the iPad - will hire tens of thousands of new workers, clamp down on illegal overtime, improve safety protocols and upgrade worker housing and other amenities.
Apple, the world's most valuable corporation, and Foxconn, China's biggest private-sector employer and Apple's main contract manufacturer, are so dominant in the global technology industry that their newly forged accord will likely have a substantial ripple effect across the sector.
