Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer, will this weekend be putting the finishing touches to Wednesday's quarterly results announcement that should prove the crowning glory to a remarkable 12 months for the 49-year-old technology tycoon.

Next week's figures will cover the Christmas shopping period which analysts reckon should show that sales of iPods, Apple's revolutionary portable digital music player, burst through the 4 million barrier in the October-December quarter alone.

Worldwide, sales of the gadget, already a design icon, are reaching the 10 million mark, helped by the barnstorming success of iTunes, the online music store where iPod users have bought well over 200 million tracks.

But on Wednesday Mr Jobs will not just be basking in the glory of a stunning Christmasfor iPod. His other seasonal triumph has been The Incredibles, the latest three-dimensional animation hit from Pixar, the Hollywood production house he bought in 1986 from George Lucas, the Star Wars impresario. The film has grossed well over US$200m (NZ$286m) so far and has consolidated the reputations of Pixar and Mr Jobs among Hollywood's most powerful names, having already produced hits such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.

However, if all that was not enough, Mr Jobs has also triumphed over a personal crisis. In August he revealed he had undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer. Normally a killer, Mr Jobs's cancer was identified as a neuroendocrine tumour, a rare form that can be treated and cured by surgical removal, whereas the more common adenocarcinoma form usually proves fatal.

Having taken August off work to recuperate, he was back at his desk in September to carry on a business career which has seen him create Apple Computer, with co-founder Steve Wozniak, from his parents' Santa Clara garage in California in 1976, only to be ousted in a boardroom coup in 1985.

Shunned by the company he helped to create, Mr Jobs went on to form NeXT Software and to buy Pixar. The former was eventually bought by Apple in 1996 for US$400m to try to boost what were by then its dangerously flagging fortunes.

The deal not only brought Mr Jobs back into Apple's core but offered him the chance to organise his own putsch, forcing out the incumbent chief executive Gil Amelio.

If NeXT brought him back into the Silicon Valley fold, Pixar made him a Hollywood power broker through a crucial joint venture deal with the Walt Disney company, one which gave him billionaire status when the film company floated in November 1996.

After his return to Apple, it was five years until the company launched the first iPods, with the iTunes music store following in 2003. However, the graphics show just how quickly the iPod and iTune operations have been growing over the past year, with iPod now controlling 87 per cent share of the market for portable music players. The success has coincided with a dramatic rise in the Apple share price, which started the year at US$21.70 and now trades at US$64.47.