Apple is planning to open a technology development center in India and has zeroed-in on Hyderabad to build the new facility in. The information comes via a new report which claims this is the first such site to be built outside the US.
Apple’s new innovation center is set to span 250000 square feet in Tishman Speyer’s WaveRock property located within Hyderabad’s IT hub. It’ll cost the company $25 million (roughly Rs 150 crore) to build. The site will open up its gates in June this year and kickstart its operations into high-gear by the end of 2016.
ZDNet estimates over 4500 jobs are going to be created for locals through this initiative. Apple is looking to develop maps for iPhones and Macs at the new facility. India is increasingly becoming an important market for the brand, having crossed $1 billion in sales for the first time there and posting a growth rate of 90%.
Jayesh Ranjan, the Secretary to the IT department in Telangana, labels the new site as a positive development since Apple had apparently considered a number of different cities across the world in places such as Europe. He could not verify if the brand had signed a memorandum of understanding. This is expected to happen by the end of February or first week of March.
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The technology development center isn’t the first Apple facility in India. That honor was taken by its technology support center in Bengaluru which was shut down 10 years ago due to poor quality services. The California-based firm has so far restricted most of its core technology operations to the US, though it does have development centers in Israel, Ireland, Japan and Italy.
If the report turns out to be true, Apple would be following in the footsteps of companies like Google and Microsoft. The former’s CEO Sundar Pichai, had announced plans to build the company’s first offshore campus outside the US in Hyderabad back in December last year.