For his role in turning Apple into a groundbreaking technology leader and the most valuable company in Silicon Valley, Fortune Magazine has named Steve Jobs its CEO of the Decade.

Fortune gave the adoration on Thursday as Jobs revived Apple and remade entire industries, defying the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression - and his own serious health problems.

It's often noted that he's a showman, a born salesman, a magician who creates a famed reality-distortion field, a tyrannical perfectionist, Fortune said in Steve Jobs' profile. It's totally accurate, of course, and the descriptions contribute to his legend.

Jobs, now 54, co-founded Apple in 1976, got booted from his company in the 1980s and returned in 1997. The magazine heralded the 2000s as the decade of Steve, when he together with Apple entered and changed the industries of music, movies and cell phones.

The report also compared Jobs with other businessmen, whom turned captains of industry defined a single market that had previously not been dominated by anyone, including Henry Ford who altered the course of the nascent auto industry, PanAm's Juan Trippe who invented the global airline and Conrad Hilton who internationalized American hospitality.

However, the industries that Jobs has turned topsy-turvy already existed when he focused on them.

Apple, which was worth about $5 billion in 2000, has been reporting record quarters since then. With its current worth of $170 billion, Apple is more valuable than rival Google.

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