Henri Aebischer was born in Switzerland when the transistor was being invented and earned a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich the year the Intel 4004 was launched.
His experience spans over 30 years in the IT industry, from mainframes to PCs and handheld PDAs; from sales and marketing to research and development; from Switzerland and France to California and England. He started his career in sales with Honeywell Bull where he became marketing manager for the Level 6 minicomputer product line. In 1977, he joined Data General Europe to launch the NOVA 4 and the early Eclipse systems, including the firm's first 32-bit minicomputer (the centrepiece of Tracy Kidder's book "The Soul of a New Machine").
For 15 years from 1981, Apple Computer Inc. was his professional home holding several management positions within Apple Europe in Paris and Apple Products in California. In the early 1980s Henri participated in the creation of Apple Europe and launched the Lisa system, the predecessor of the Macintosh.
In 1985, Henri moved to California where he first orchestrated (as the 'right-hand' to Apple International's Vice President), the creation and execution of business plans and major product launches for subsidiaries outside the USA. Then, as manager of Corporate Technology Services, he significantly increased the productivity of Apple's Cray supercomputer by running development applications on top of just research and by introducing preventive maintenance on the attached 3000-node R&D network.
In 1988, he became worldwide director of marketing for Apple's networking products. Within less than a year, his team introduced over 20 new products in one event (first ever Apple corporate event in New York), drove the definition of 20 additional products, and integrated N&C functions within the Mac OS, including the first Internet connection.
In 1990 Henri returned to Europe as general manager of the Paris-based European R&D Centre with the mission to develop Apple's presence in the European telecom sector. With a team of fifty people, his focus was on the delivery of key products at the leading edge of modem and wireless technologies and he increased Apple Europe sales in mobile computing by over 20%. Apple Europe earned the responsibility to develop worldwide modems for all PowerBook laptops. In wireless, the R&D centre had several firsts leveraging CT-2 and GSM networks in co-operation with major telecom manufacturers and operators. Teaming up with Nokia and Cellnet, Apple launched the first laptop system able to communicate over the GSM network.