TECH NEWS – Apple seems to have run out of options, as the company’s CEO Tim Cook has openly stated that they will only lay off people as a last resort.
Project Titan, Apple’s self-driving car project, has failed after a decade of development. Another concept has also been scrapped, as there will be no microLED for the Apple Watch Ultra that the Cupertino company is working on. These are two major projects from which people will either be transferred elsewhere or laid off. More than 700 people could lose their jobs in the layoffs, according to documents related to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act in the state of California (and reported by 9to5Mac).
According to the California Employment Development Department, 58 people are leaving the company’s Santa Clara office. This was the office of LuxVue Technology, a company specializing in microLED panels that was acquired by Apple in 2014. Apple stopped development because it would not have been commercially viable (a massive yield and pricing problem), so the Apple Watch Ultra will have an OLED display instead of microLED technology.
Apple is also laying off over 120 people in San Diego. This team had been evaluating Siri’s responses to users and working to improve the assistant’s accuracy. The laid-off employees have been offered a transfer to Austin, Texas, but those who prefer to continue their careers elsewhere will receive a severance package based on their time with the company. The Apple Car project in Santa Clara will lose 371 employees.
Even though Apple has shut down these two projects, the company is not holding back on product development, as we reported recently that the company is starting to look at robotics and may be working on a mobile robot and a tabletop model, and these may not be forthcoming either (and with early concepts years away, there is a good chance that they will be).
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