Submitted by Jon Reed on
According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple has been hiring hundreds of engineers and supply chain managers in China and Taiwan, in an effort to support a faster paced product release schedule. With a pair of new iPhones on the way (supposedly), a new iPad, a new Apple TV and the iWatch among others, Apple now has more new products than ever before. The amount of new products, coupled with an increasingly shorter product cycle and a major push into the Chinese market with the China Mobile deal, warrants the hiring spree. Apple now has over 600 engineers and operations staff in China, and a global total of 80,300 full-time employees, up from 72,800 a year earlier.
Some other notable Apple financial news over the past week:
At Apple's annual shareholder meeting last week, Tim Cook noted that Apple has acquired 23 companies over the past 16 months, and the company's research and
development spending increased by 32% in 2013. He also noted that Apple's revenue in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) was just 4 billion in 2010, but jumped to an impressive $30 billion in 2013. You can read more at Apple Insider.
Also at the shareholder meeting, Tim Cook described Apple TV as "difficult to call a hobby." This came on the heels of his announcement that the sales of the $99 units topped $1 billion in 2013. According to Asymco analyst Horace Dediu, "Apple TV is the fastest growing hardware product in Apple’s line-up,” and, by itself, is about 25% the size of the entire U.S. flat panel market, with 10 million units sold. Read more at Cult of Mac.Goldman Sachs announced on Monday that it has added Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer to its board of directors. Oppenheimer is the thirteenth member of the board, and will sit on the Audit, Risk, Compensation and Corporate Governance, Nominating, and Public Responsibilities committees at Goldman Sachs. Read more at the Mac Observer.