The tributes are flowing in to commemorate the life of visionary Steve Jobs. But already, some of the focus is turning to what comes next for the company he founded, Apple.

Jobs died Wednesday at age 56. Though the cause of death has not been made public, he'd been fighting a well-publicized battle against pancreatic cancer since 2004.

In the early 1990s, when Jobs returned to the company he founded after an unceremonious ouster years earlier, the company was an also-ran in the technology space. Microsoft was the most important technology firm in the world, and Google didn't even exist. Today, Apple employs almost 50,000 people globally. Annual sales are expected to exceed $100 billion this year.