Apple announced today that it is planning to invest more money into Germany, in the form of a major chip lab it plans to build in Munich. The company has said that it would construct a 30,000-meter square facility in Karlstrasse, which would open by the end of 2022, and claims that it will be Europe’s largest research and development site for mobile wireless semiconductors and software.
While Apple’s existing engineers in Munich work on power management design, wireless technologies, application processors etc. the employees in the new facility- which the company is calling the European Silicon Design- will be working on 5G as well as wireless technologies.
This is not Apple’s first investment in Germany by far. The firm already has seven offices in Munich, with over 4,000 staff members out of which 1,500 are engineers. The company also partners with a number of German providers such as DELO, Infineon and Varta. The Cupertino tech giant is further planning to invest more than a billion euros in Germany over the course of the next three years, which will include this new facility as well as other developments.
“Munich has been a home to Apple for four decades, and we’re grateful to this community and to Germany for being a part of our journey,” said Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook in his statement. Indeed, half of the total number of Apple’s power management engineers are located in Germany, and Munich is Apple’s largest engineering hub in Europe, but it is not exclusive to Apple. Munich is also the leading tech hub in the whole of Europe in general, with many big-name companies investing a lot here. Google itself has over a thousand employees situated here, as well as being home to giants in the vehicle sector such as Audi and BMW.
