Apple to open R&D center in Shenzhen in 2017
Apple on Wednesday local China time announced plans to open a research and development center in the southern city of Shenzhen in 2017, further cementing relations with the important growth market.
Apple CEO Tim Cook (left) meets with Party Secretary of Shenzhen Ma Xingrui. | Source: Shenzhen Economic Daily
CEO Tim Cook made the announcement Tuesday night during a meeting with local officials as part of a national innovation summit, Reuters reports, citing the Shenzhen Economic Daily.
According to the local publication, Communist Party Secretary of Shenzhen Ma Xingrui and his deputy, Mayor Xu Qin, attended the event. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, whose company serves as a major Apple supplier and controls significant manufacturing assets in the region, was also on hand for the announcement.
With the upcoming R&D center Apple is looking to expand its partnership with Shenzhen, a bustling metropolis known for its prowess in producing high technology goods. In an interview, Cook said Shenzhen has undergone tremendous changes since he first visited the city 20 years ago to inspect the manufacturing mecca. Cook went on to tout "Shenzhen quality" as an important contributor to successful Apple's product lines like iPhone, adding that the city's factory processes lead much of the world.
In an emailed statement to Reuters, Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock offered further detail on the upcoming facility.
"We are excited to be opening a new Research and Development center here next year so our engineering team can work even more closely and collaboratively with our manufacturing partners," Rosenstock said. "The Shenzhen center, along with the Beijing center, is also aimed at strengthening relationships with local partners and universities as we work to support talent development across the country," he said.
Apple CEO Tim Cook (left) meets with Party Secretary of Shenzhen Ma Xingrui. | Source: Shenzhen Economic Daily
CEO Tim Cook made the announcement Tuesday night during a meeting with local officials as part of a national innovation summit, Reuters reports, citing the Shenzhen Economic Daily.
According to the local publication, Communist Party Secretary of Shenzhen Ma Xingrui and his deputy, Mayor Xu Qin, attended the event. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, whose company serves as a major Apple supplier and controls significant manufacturing assets in the region, was also on hand for the announcement.
With the upcoming R&D center Apple is looking to expand its partnership with Shenzhen, a bustling metropolis known for its prowess in producing high technology goods. In an interview, Cook said Shenzhen has undergone tremendous changes since he first visited the city 20 years ago to inspect the manufacturing mecca. Cook went on to tout "Shenzhen quality" as an important contributor to successful Apple's product lines like iPhone, adding that the city's factory processes lead much of the world.
In an emailed statement to Reuters, Apple spokesman Josh Rosenstock offered further detail on the upcoming facility.
"We are excited to be opening a new Research and Development center here next year so our engineering team can work even more closely and collaboratively with our manufacturing partners," Rosenstock said. "The Shenzhen center, along with the Beijing center, is also aimed at strengthening relationships with local partners and universities as we work to support talent development across the country," he said.
Comments
I don't underestimate it... On your military red herring: You underestimate the 'U.S.' government will to do the same to their own, and the overt 'non-benigness' of said gov't. We don't own apple. The world does (welcome to world capitalism).
And if you think the physical location somehow provides data loss protection in a global cold military conflict, you don't understand the cyberthreat.
On your corporate protectionism argument: If that is your argument is apple as a profitable company is doomed because China will siphon secrets to chinese industry, then Apple is doomed now, with or without opening up this facility. Bottom Line, Apple's survival is to remain one step faster than the wolves, and the trade off of tapping into the Chinese skill set vs the risk of these players being coopted by their country's intelligence forces weighs on the side getting the skills.
The era of American imperial hegemony is based on forces that are automatically unwinding in the era of electronic media. I keep telling you guys to read your Marshall McLuhan. The earth is now wired, inderdependent in ways impossible and unimagined in the days of naval empires, which is where your head is stuck.
Tim Cook is the first global executive with real power to understand this interdependence in a real and practical way. His corporation, which stands at the beginning of the age of global cooperation the way the East India Company stood at the beginning of the age of colonial, imperial -state competition, is wirelessly connecting the social instincts of humanity among the former warring nations — this new system will result in a post-national, trans-ethnic system of interlocked economies and intellectual pursuits, given our conscious wiil. The resulting synergy, the power of inclusiveness that Tim Cook is always talking about, is already modeled by Apple's incredibly rapid global success.
The America-first voice of the old imperialism that you unfortunately join in expressing here represents a threat to the new consciousness that has already appeared, but whose continued progress is by no means assured, given the number of people who refuse to see it.