WSJ: Apple Is Building An engineering team In Asia To Drive New Product Development

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is hiring hundreds of new engineers and supply-chain managers in China and Taiwan as it attempts to speed up product development and launch a wider range of devices.

WSJ said the Cupertino-based company is hiring engineers from rival smartphone maker HTC and other Taiwanese tech firms to build up teams in Shanghai and Taipei.

This is in addition to several hundred new engineers and operations staff the company hired in China over the past two years. The total number of engineers and operations staff in China now exceeds 600, the report said.

“Apple is building an engineering team in Taipei to drive new iPhone product development,” Apple said in one recruiting email obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

The hiring push also comes as Apple is trying to take a bigger bite out of Greater China, its fastest-growing market in the most recent quarter, and one where the company has high hopes after leading mobile operator China Mobile began selling iPhones in January,” Daisuke Wakabayashi reports for WSJ. “Apple said sales in Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, rose 29% in its first fiscal quarter ended Dec. 28 to $8.84 billion.”

The report suggests that Apple’s latest slogan – Made By Apple in California, will still be applicable since core research and development will remain in Cupertino. “But new positions in Greater China span a wide range, from working with suppliers on hardware development for touchscreens and cameras, to electrical engineering and software quality assurance,” according the report.

Apple reportedly has 80,300 full-time employees as of its annual report last September, up from 72,800 a year earlier.

WSJ