Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Inc, has undergone a liver transplant during his medical leave two months ago and is expected to return to work sometime later this month reported the Wall Street Journal.

Six months ago Jobs moved away from handling the day to day operations of Apple Inc. citing health reasons. The Journal quoted an unnamed source, "a person familiar with the thinking at Apple" who said that Jobs would perhaps only return to work part time to begin with and Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook may continue to handle daily operations of the company initially.

The Journal said neither Jobs nor a company spokeswoman confirmed the report.

According to the report "At least some Apple directors were aware of the CEO's surgery" and were briefed weekly by Job's doctor. The surgery that took place two months ago was undertaken in Tennessee as there are three facilities which can perform such a procedure, there is no residency requirement and the wait is among the shortest in the country.

On Aug 1, 2004 Jobs had announced that he had undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer and on Jan 5, 2009 in an open letter to the "Apple Community" Jobs said that the reason he was losing weight was not a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer but a treatable hormone imbalance for which he had already begun a "relatively simple and straightforward" treatment. He added that he would continue as Apple CEO during his recovery, and that he expected to be noticeably improved in a matter of months.

However in an e-mail to Apple employees nine days later Jobs said, "… during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought. In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June."

Although COO Tim Cook was managing the day to day running the Journal report said that Jobs had come to work from time to time and was maintaining a "firm grip" on the company and involving himself in projects of his choosing.