“In recent years, Apple Inc. has quietly put together a global network of small research and development labs, from the French Alps to New Zealand,” Alex Webb reports for Bloomberg.
“Nothing unusual about that for a company that spends $11 billion a year on R&D,” Webb reports. “Look a little closer, however, and you’ll notice that many of these labs are located near companies with a strong record in mapping, augmented reality and other areas Apple is pushing into. In several cases, these companies lost employees to Apple not long after the iPhone maker came to town.”
“Berlin: In early 2016, Apple opened an office in the German capital, located not two miles from HERE, a maps company that Nokia Oyj sold to a consortium of German carmakers in 2015. Today, Apple’s lab is mostly staffed by former HERE software engineers,” Webb reports. “Wellington: Since the beginning of last year, Apple has quietly hired a handful of engineers from Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital, the visual effects house behind The Lord of the Rings, Avatar and The Planet of the Apes. The team is part of the augmented reality division Apple created in 2016 to develop smart glasses that may ultimately supplant the iPhone, according to a person familiar with the operation.”
Many more examples in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you don’t want to lose your valuable employees, make sure they’ll happy and well-compensated regardless of, but also especially where Apple R&D labs are located.
Lazy Eddy Cue needs to be replaced by a new better and capable person, he is too comfortable riding the gravy train (on past successes)
Apple shops well. How hard is it to leave them and stay at your current profession?
Sour grapes much? You want some cheese with that whine?
Don’t be banal…
I favor poaching, it gives workers latitude and control over their careers, provided they don’t fall into some “Hotel California” Non-Compete trap and are then stuck or are forced to give up other opportunities.
So please, put your pom-poms down and get real!
You’re the only one being obvious and trite, with every comment you make, constantly bellyaching about Apple’s success. I guess retired old people need a hobby?
I see you looked it up. Good! I commend you.
Not retired. Gainfully employed.
Wow, that’s some ego. Maybe you had to look up “banal” to make your comment sound smart, but I already knew what the word meant. The way you write is very revealing, the words you use, they show your true nature clearly. You probably don’t even realize that.
Samater? I don’t talk ‘merican good enuff? It is my second langij after all.
American would be my first guess. Many of us are bilingual, you’re not as special as you think. Like many Americans you think you’re smarter than you are. You fancy yourself some kind of intellectual. You likely have multiple accounts on many sites, and it would follow you have more than one username across those sites. You’ve picked Apple as your bogeyman for some reason so all those other accounts will be on Apple related sites. You fill some kind of hole in your life by posting comments about Apple, and you’ve convinced yourself it’s a noble pursuit instead of what it really is, a waste of time.
really you hate americans that much lol
No, pity would be a better way to describe how I feel about Americans. I visit the US from time to time and the people generally remind me of children who don’t know how the wrld actually works, there’s a lot of ignorance in America.
It’s worse than you imagined. I’m not even as smart as you think I am…
Aaaah bless…Bloomberg in search of a negative angle – as if poaching is somehow illegal.
Alternative interpretation: Apple shows it’s a serious player, with the R&D spend to back it up. Potential employee: “I’ll have me some of that”
“Apple spends 11 billion a year on R&D”
the products that were announced seemed pretty good but what do you all think, 11 billion bucks a year, is Apple spending it well, getting a big bang for the buck or no?
(I don’t really have an idea what R&D costs. When Jobs came back to Apple if I remember correctly Apple had less than 5 b in the bank, He rolled that, grew and built iMac, iPod , iTunes, iPad, App store, iPhone, retail stores etc in a bit more than 10 years or so)
I read somewhere that Apple spent over $2B on chip dev in 2015. With more in-house chip designs every year, it’s probably nearer $4B now. Cutting edge doesn’t come cheap.
Given Apple’s return on that $11B I’d say Intel spending $12B+ every year doesn’t get anywhere near as good value.
How would you know what Dell makes? As a private company, they don’t have to submit SEC reports. Dell’s come a long way and it may very well have a bigger ROI than you imagine.
I don’t and you don’t…but then I didn’t mention them either and since they don’t publish figures they are irrelevant to my point about ROI.
Apple is pretty smart. They KNOW where to locate their offices . . . near great people who can help them. Unlike MS who tries to peddle their low class wares in the shadow of Apple!