Barack Obama meets with Apple CEO Steve Jobs

(AFP PHOTO/RYAN ANSON)

President Barack Obama met on Thursday afternoon in San Francisco with Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

"They discussed American competitiveness and education, especially reforms such as the President's Race to the Top initiative," Gibbs said in a statement.

Obama and Jobs also talked about energy independence and ways to increase job creation, Gibbs added.

Earlier, Gibbs told reporters traveling on Air Force One from Seattle to San Francisco that it was "a meeting the president was interested in having."

"I think they last met ... along the trail in the 2008 (presidential) campaign," Gibbs said.

Obama is on a four-day trip through Western US states, seeking to bolster Democratic candidates before the November 2 midterm elections, in which his party is expected to lose many US congressional seats and state governorships.