Our friend Jeff Ganyard at MacSpeech/Nuance Communications made an interesting comment this afternoon at WWDC...

While Apple doesn't typically parade all of their executives across a keynote anyway, this year's keynote did have one noticeable omission -- Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President, Worldwide Product Marketing. Scott Forstall, Jonathan Ive, Bob Mansfield, and others were part of keynote (either live or in video), but not Phil. This is a contrast from the past.

What does this mean? Was Phil simply not needed? Was he out sick? Maybe Apple is trying to spread the breadth around a bit to show leadership is deep as part of a Jobs' succession plan. But, if that were the case, why cut Phil out? What's up with that?

Time will tell.