Apple Inc. plans to lay off 614 employees in California, according to a regulatory filing. brindled By today’s Wall Street Journal.
The layoffs reportedly affect teams involved in two recently canceled engineering initiatives. The first initiative, known internally as Project Titan, focused on developing electric vehicles. The other was Apple’s effort to design custom displays for its devices.
Depending on the bloombergOf the employees affected by these cuts, 87 work in facilities dedicated to Apple display development. Until recently, iPhone makers were exploring ways to create custom displays based on microLED technology, which could deliver sharper resolutions than predecessors such as LED panels. It is also less likely that certain malfunctions will occur that affect other displays.
The pixels in a microLED display are tiny semiconductor structures that are etched into a silicon wafer in a chip factory. The pixels removed from the wafer are placed on the display using a process called LED transfer. Apple is known to have built a display manufacturing plant in San Clara, California, but planned to leave the LED transfer process to a supplier.
The company reportedly scrapped the project. woke up At the end of last month. According to sources a few weeks ago: bloomberg Apple also gave up its plans to produce electric vehicles. This decision reportedly came from concerns about vehicle development costs and profit margins.
According to Blomberg, 317 of the employees affected by the layoffs detailed today worked at Apple’s “main” automotive development facility in Santa Clara. Dozens of employees from several satellite offices are also believed to have left the company.
Reports that Apple wanted to build an electric car first surfaced in 2015. Originally, Apple wanted to develop a car with fully self-driving capabilities. Apple was about to scrap the project changed focus We have started developing ‘Level 2+’ partial autonomous driving software.
There are currently several vehicles on the market with so-called Level 2 capabilities. These features automate tasks such as centering and lane changes. Apple is believed to have assembled a test fleet of dozens of vehicles before canceling the Titan project.
Some members of the car development group are believed to have moved to teams focusing on other projects, including personal robotics. recent reports propose Apple is developing home robots that can follow the user and tabletop devices that move computer screens.
Other Project Titan employees have reportedly been transferred to teams focused on artificial intelligence development. The apple is predicted is rolling out several new AI features for its devices in the coming quarters, including coding assistance and automated presentation creation tools. Last year at the company Acquisition A startup called DarwinAI Corp. has developed machine learning software to find defects in printed circuit boards.