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In a company-wide email, the Apple CEO wrote, 'This weekend I underwent a successful surgery to remove a cancerous tumour from my pancreas. I had a very rare form of pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumour, which represents about one per cent of the total cases of pancreatic cancer diagnosed each year,

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and can be cured by surgical removal if diagnosed in time (mine was).'

Jobs added that 'thank God' he did not have the more common and more lethal form of pancreatic cancer, adenocarcinoma, sufferers of which have a life expectancy of about a year from diagnosis.

Jobs will require no chemotherapy or radiotherapy but will take a month off, returning to Apple in September. Timothy Cook, executive vice president of Worldwide Sales and Operations, will cover in Jobs' absence.

In an interview with Bloomberg Today, Apple Board member William Campbell said, 'I was over there a little bit ago. He is awake, alert, energetic, his color is good. He's animated and the doctors have communicated that Steve's prognosis is extremely good.'

Jobs ending his email by saying that he was writing from his hospital bed, using a 17in PowerBook and an AirPort Express wireless connection to the Internet.