In the wake of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s visit to Israel on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reports the company’s increasing interest in the country is connected to chip design and development.
“Apple’s Israeli acquisitions and its expanding local workforce show that the company is becoming more and more independent on the chip level, where it once had to rely on external suppliers,” said Shlomo Gradman, chairman of the Israeli Semiconductor Club.
Apple recently opened a new research and development facility in Israel, north of Tel Aviv. The facility is the company’s second largest R&D operation outside of the United States.
Apple has made moves in recent years to increase internal development of chips, acquiring Anobit Technologies and PrimeSense, and hiring several Texas Instruments engineers in Israel, following TI’s job cuts at its Ra’anana offices.
“We’ve hired our first individual in Israel in 2011 and we now have over 700 people working in Israel directly for us,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in the meeting with Israeli president Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday. “Israel and Apple have gotten much closer together over the last three years than ever before, and we see that as just the beginning,” he added.
Apple VP of hardware technologies Johny Srouji is an Israeli Arab that grew up in Haifa, and holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Computer Science from Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology. Srouji joined Apple in 2008.
(Via MacRumors)
