Apple has announced a few years ago that it intends to expand its business in San Diego and establish a hardware and software engineering center. Now that Apple has bought the 67-acre old campus that once belonged to Hewlett-Packard, this appears to be its first commercial acquisition in the area, and the company is stepping up its own development of components such as baseband chips.
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Moreover, Apple bought HP’s old inkjet research lab campus in San Diego’s Rancho Bernardo neighborhood, about 20 miles from many of Qualcomm’s offices. According to the “San Diego Union-Tribune” report, Apple spent $445 million to buy the 67.6-acre campus, which is called the Rancho Vista Enterprise Center.
The acquisition seems to indicate that Apple is firmly committed to developing baseband chips and another wireless engineering. Shortly after Apple announced its intention to develop its engineering technology in San Diego, the company announced the acquisition of Intel’s smartphone baseband business for $1 billion and began developing its own baseband.
However, well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo previously said that Apple’s efforts to develop its own baseband chips seem to have failed, and the iPhone will continue to use Qualcomm baseband chips. Apple responded in a statement: “We have been part of the San Diego community for over 20 years. We are excited to continue investing here as we expand our world-class team.” A spokesman for the company declined to comment further.
