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Apple recently chose Austin, Texas as the location for a major new campus. Austin is a huge tech hub, with companies like Samsung, AMD, Intel, Cisco, Applied Micro and Apple itself already having a major presence in the city. But many are still wondering why Apple chose to expand outside of its home town so aggressively. The company has long declared that its devices are "designed in Cupertino," but with a huge portion of development moving to Austin, that may no longer be the case. But recently, the Wall Street Journal drilled into Apple's reasoning behind the decision. Among other things, Apple seemingly intends to pull machine learning and semiconductor engineering talent to Austin, which is essential if they want to maintain high margins on their iDevices.
Aside from the political goodwill, the job expansion outside Silicon Valley could help Apple diversify beyond the iPhone... Traditionally, gadget makers like Apple have bought chips made by other companies. But in the past decade, Apple has expanded its semiconductor efforts to include the Bluetooth chip that powers AirPods and graphics processors for the iPhone. Its efforts helped enable the facial-recognition technology that it introduced with last year’s iPhones, a feature that helped justify raising the starting price of the iPhone X by more than 50% to $999. "If you're doing chip design, that would be the place to be," Mr. Maire said of San Diego.
Aside from the political goodwill, the job expansion outside Silicon Valley could help Apple diversify beyond the iPhone... Traditionally, gadget makers like Apple have bought chips made by other companies. But in the past decade, Apple has expanded its semiconductor efforts to include the Bluetooth chip that powers AirPods and graphics processors for the iPhone. Its efforts helped enable the facial-recognition technology that it introduced with last year’s iPhones, a feature that helped justify raising the starting price of the iPhone X by more than 50% to $999. "If you're doing chip design, that would be the place to be," Mr. Maire said of San Diego.