Apple is working on establishing a design center in Germany. The company is reportedly set to invest more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) over a course of three years. The design center will work on research and development of silicon for the company.
The iPhone maker will soon have a 30,000 square meter facility for the silicon R&D design center. It is to be located in the central part of Munich and the company will reportedly hire several hundred people.
“I couldn’t be more excited for everything our Munich engineering teams will discover — from exploring the new frontiers of 5G technology, to a new generation of technologies that bring power, speed, and connectivity to the world,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement.
Apple is expected to move away from using Qualcomm modems to creating its own modems in the near future. The company also bought the majority portion of modem division of Intel for approximately $1 billion. It plans to create its own modems for use by 2023 – it plans to manufacture most of its parts in-house.
The area of Munic is already one of the largest engineering hubs Apple has in Europe. It has already employed more than 1,500 engineers from across 40 countries across the globe. The jobs include roles in the fields such as power management design, wireless technologies, and application processors.
Bloomberg notes that the area around the Bavarian capital is popular for chip development. One of Europe’s major semiconductor technology institutes such as the Fraunhofer Group for Microelectronics are based in Munich. Also, a longtime Apple partner Infineon Technologies also has a center in the same region.
Last year, Apple announced that the Mac will be transitioning from Intel to its own silicon over a course of two years. Going forward, the company plans to reduce reliance on other companies for parts.
