Roger Fingas
Apple has signed a lease for the 44th and 45th floors of a Seattle office tower at Two Union Square, expanding its corporate footprint in a city largely dominated by companies like Amazon and Microsoft, a report said on Monday.
The combined space measures approximately 30,000 square feet, two sources indicated to Bloomberg. That could fit anywhere between 120 and 200 workers.
The purpose of the expansion is unknown, but Apple opened an engineering office in the city last November. At least some core staff are believed to have been absorbed through a takeover of cloud computing startup Union Bay Networks, and been put to work on Apple's own cloud services including iCloud and iTunes.
The new space could represent an intensification of that effort. Given the presence of Amazon and Microsoft, as well as satellite operations by Alibaba, Google, and Facebook, Apple could be looking to exploit Seattle's large reservoir of cloud-oriented talent.
Apple's reliance on cloud platforms is only expected to grow in the next year. On June 30 it launched Apple Music, and by the end of the year it could debut its long-rumored streaming TV service, featuring a "skinny" bundle of live TV channels.
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Also two major wireless companies are there: T-Mobile's headquarters are in Bellevue, AT&T's wireless test center and some other operations are in Redmond (used to be the headquarters of the old AT&T Wireless).
Nobody knows why Apple does most of the time, and there's usually a well hidden reason that won't become obvious for a year or more... meanwhile Apple is stretching out in front of some unsuspecting competitor....
Nobody knows why Apple does most of the time, and there's usually a well hidden reason that won't become obvious for a year or more... meanwhile Apple is stretching out in front of some unsuspecting competitor....
Massive Microsoft phone layoffs. There are bound to be some quality employees who are now available without recruitment or bonuses. Apple just being thrifty as usual.
Seattle has a burgeoning biotech base. Research Kit?
My town! Love to see Apple expand their presence here. Lots of untapped potential. T-Mobile in Bellevue plus a huge pool of Microsoft Windows 10 Mobile to pick from now that they've essentially bowed out of the smartphone market.