My second piece at PJMedia has gone live this morning. It’s an exploration of Apple’s recent purchase of Israeli flash memory company Anobit and other plans they may have to separately establish a brand new research and development centre in Israel. Their first R&D facility outside of California. Please read the whole piece over at PJMedia.
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Buying Anobit is not the end of the story for Apple. Sources in Israel are reporting that, independent of the Anobit purchase, Apple is looking to establish their own chip research and development office. This is big news because Apple has never performed core component or product design work outside of California. Only marketing, selling, and support have happened out of the state.
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The real question: why did it take Apple so long? One suspected cause was the political leanings of Steve Jobs’ wife: firmly in the left-leaning liberal and pro-Palestinian camps. Apple has neglected Israel as a market for its computers for years despite Israel leading the world in per-capita computer use. Apple’s market share in personal computers is much lower in Israel than in the United States or even Europe, and support for Hebrew is not as comprehensive as it is on Windows.
So now Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and Google are all working and developing new products in Israel. Ironically, that means that the “boycott Israel” crowd has to use computers and software developed in Israel to argue that the country is a terrible place that should be wiped out.
