Apple mulls new chip boffinry HQ in Israel
R&D centre threat to Samsung
Apple is planning to set up a research and development centre in Israel, the first ever outside of its Cupertino HQ.
Loose-lipped sources told Israeli business daily Globes that the fruity firm had lined up Aharon Aharon, a 30-year veteran of the technology sector who has worked for companies like IBM and Siemens, to head up the R&D facility, which will focus on semiconductors.
Israel is a hotbed of semiconductor development, with the nation's universities spawning many chip-oriented startups that have worked with or been acquired by major silicon companies.
Don't forget: much of the foundation work on Intel's latest processors, particularly those aimed at mobile devices, was done by the company's Israeli teams.
Apple has its eye on developments in the country, since it's also rumoured to be in talks to snap up Anobit, an Israeli flash controller company.
The new R&D centre will be located in Herzliya, Israel's Silicon Valley, where Anobit is also headquartered. Earlier this week, a report in Hebrew daily business paper Calcalist suggested the iPhone and iPad maker was interested in snapping up Anobit for around $400 to $500 million.
Although Apple is notorious for wanting total control over all components that go into its hardware, the firm is usually quite happy to have other manufacturers making those bits and pieces to their very specific specifications.
However, it's currently busy muddying the water with Samsung - its long-term partner in chip-making and memory-building - by taking the South Korean biz to court here, there and everywhere over its smartphones.
So it's no surprise that Apple might like its very own chips and flash at some point, thereby removing all Samsung stuff from its products. The acquisition of Anobit may have something of the anti-Samsung strategy in it in another sense as well, since Samsung is reportedly a customer and partner of the Israeli firm. ®
COMMENTS
No oil
Also since 1948 all the Arab countries kicked out most of their Jewish Populations. Many trades blocked (like Medieval Europe), so many professional (lots of subsistence peasants too). After 1933 Lots of European Jewish people tried to go to the Palestine Mandate (4/5ths is now Jordan). Even when the Muslim Turkish Ottomans ruled a lot of people got Turkish permission prior to 1914 (a lot at end of Victorian Era) escaping Czarist and East European Pogroms.
Then the ones surviving the Hitler/Nazi extermination of 6M (many educated people) in Europe, many went to USA or Palestine Mandate/ Israel after WWII. Then in 1980s to 1990s many left Russia.
Jewish people, especially the secular ones always have believed in Literacy and Education. There was once a Golden age of Moslem scholarship (women not invited though), but by the latter days of Ottoman Empire the average Arab (Christian, Druze or Moslem) had no opportunity or interest in Education. The Ottomans at one stage controlled almost all the Middle East, Turkey, parts of Europe and North Africa. They were lazy and corrupt rulers and not much liked by their Arab subjects. It wasn't hard for Lawrence of Arabia to make promises. However the French and British broke most of the promises made 1914 to 1936 to Arabs in the middle East and THEY, not Arabs decided most of the borders and Countries. "Modern", Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Israel and other places exist in present form due to French and UK decisions.
The Arabs didn't know about this till too late. Not that they could have changed a thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
The Iranians are and have been very well educated. But don't call them Arabs. Moderate ones will just tell you politely that you might as well accuse Australians of being Chinese.
What?
Israel has never defined its borders.
How would you expect neighbouring countries to recognise a country that does not specify where it ends and others begin?
Arabs 'invaded' in 1948.Seriously?
Arabs set the borders?
What about the 3/4 million refugees(1947) still living in open air prison camps like Gaza and the West Bank? Their land was taken. Their home and villages were erased from the map.
When Jews were being persecuted during the Inquisition most fled to the ME for protection.
oversight
"Borders were agreed in 1948 by UN and not accepted by Arabs. Jordan got 4/5ths of Palestine.
So Arabs invaded in 1948...France, UK and the Arabs created Israel's borders. Not Israel."
Between whom were those borders agreed in 1948 (by which I actually think you mean 1947, given that that's when the UN Partition Plan was agreed by the UN GA)?
And wouldn't the Haganah, Lehi, Irgun and the forces of the Yishuv generally be rather disappointed to discover it was in fact France, UK and the Arabs that achieved the creation of the modern state of Israel rather than them?
Law of unintended consequences. In the same fashion that suing Samsung.........
.............all over known space has contributed to raising Samsung's brand profile it is possible that this acquisition might also have unintended consequences.
"Apple might like its very own chips and flash at some point, thereby removing all Samsung stuff from its products."
This will likely result in Samsung investing even harder in mob/tab production and sales in order to shift their own "stuff" in addition to selling it to other OEMs.
Meeep. Wrong !
Apple switched to PowerPC before they developed MacOS X. Which is light-years ahead of simpleton MacOS 9. A single buggy application could crash the whole system by something as bad as a non-initialized pointer. Which happens often during development and sometimes after release.
MacOS X is a full-fledged Unix operating system with all its benefits, from process isolation to multi-user-capability, proper networking and so on.
So the innovation was to put a polished GUI on top of Unix, something HP, SUN and the Linux folks had not managed up to that point. And which Ubuntu still cannot completely match (at least the "polished" part).
There was certainly also innovation in the iPhone, namely transforming the phone into a mobile computer which is always connected, has lots of third-party apps and can also act as a phone.
I am not a fanboy and do not like their extremely restrictive App Store and "mind the children/censor sex" thing, but they did indeed produce quite a bit of innovation in terms of technology. Let's be fair and acknowledge this.
