Top contender, but has a way to go before he achieves near Jobs-level success.

Hmm, I'd put Jobs lower and Musk higher; I'd suggest we're overscoring Steve Jobs still. Paypal is clearly already a big success though, and both Tesla and SpaceX have the potential to become so in the coming years.

For me, we're still under Jobs' reality distortion field. I mean, which companies did he build? NeXT which did interesting technology but basically died in the market. Pixar where there's significant dispute about his level of involvement and he may have been more an angel investor.

And Apple. Huge, sure. But he was kicked out the first time round for focusing exclusively on a product that was losing money hand over fist, was both more expensive and less capable than rival products, and which was never more than a minor niche player (albeit stably so), squandering the Apple II's early work. When he returned it was some years before they regained serious success, and that was largely with iOS. Which, by the time of his death, was already losing market position in both phones and tablets, a trend which is showing no sign of abating and every likelihood of levelling out in much the same position the Mac ultimately did, for similar reasons - one manufacturer and a few devices simply can't innovate as fast as a whole army of rivals cooperating. He built great products, but a great company to live for a lifetime?

Now, don't get me wrong. I'd love to have even 0.1% of Steve Jobs' success. He was a visionary, a brilliant marketer and an excellent communicator. But I'd suggest his personal single-minded obsession interfered with his ability to hear the market reaction to his products, and the consequence of that was not companies that last a lifetime.

Paypal is interesting and a niche success, but wasn't deeply visionary. SpaceX and Tesla are cool, and may even end up being market successes - but they still have a ways to go before proving themselves.

I'm a Musk fan, but Jobs had a huge body of work in fantastic products/movies that his enterprises created under his leadership.

a trend which is showing no sign of abating and every likelihood of levelling out in much the same position the Mac ultimately did

There's your problem right there. You're somehow equating number of clone devices out there to Jobs's visionary ability to create entirely new markets with products and services that were then copied endlessly.

Number of cheap clone devices out there produced by third party manufactures was never Jobs' goal. How is IBM doing with that whole computer clone business, by the way?

Paypal was much more than a niche success - "payments on the internet" is huge. You can argue Paypal didn't materialize its vision, but the vision was there.

IBM isn't hip, but it's still a meaningful company that's thriving.

That's because IBM-the-company has always been a multi-headed beast with a lot of other -- and far more successful -- businesses both before and after the IBM PC business existed. crusso is not talking about the company, but the business, which IBM got out of in 2004/2005 after years of losing money on it.