Apple Corporate

Toshiba's building a $1.2 billion LCD plant, but it's reportedly not alone in footing the bill.

Nikkei, a Japanese business news outlet, today reported that Apple will be investing in the factory, which will be cranking out small mobile phone displays for future iPhones, according to Reuters.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The factory is set to be built starting early next year in Ishikawa Prefecture, an area on the west side of the country about 200 miles from Tokyo. The plant will be run by Toshiba Mobile Display, an arm of … Read more

Two of the biggest names in mobile are reportedly participating in the land grab for the patents belonging to bankrupt telcom firm Nortel.

Reuters quotes unnamed sources in a story published yesterday detailing how the auction currently underway for the intellectual property assets of the former Canadian giant is expected to draw the interest of Apple, Google, and others, including perhaps Motorola and Research In Motion.

Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2009, and has roughly 4,000 patents that are calculated to be worth more than $1 billion collectively. The rumor is that the patents have been divided … Read more

It's not that much of a surprise that Apple thinks watching 3D content with plastic glasses is dumb.

And the company that's all about sleek, cool, and simple has actually been granted a patent on a method of projecting a 3D image that can be perceived properly without glasses.

The system would work like this: each pixel would be projected onto a reflective, textured surface, which is then bounced into a viewer's left and right eye separately, producing the 3D, or stereoscopic, effect. it would sense the locations of both eyes of the each viewer, so multiple … Read more

Olivier Sanche, the man who oversaw Apple's global data center operations, died on Thursday, Apple has confirmed.

Sanche, 41, died of a heart attack on Thanksgiving Day, according to multiple reports from his friends.

"We are saddened by Olivier's passing," an Apple representative said today. "We will miss him tremendously and our thoughts are with his family,"

An Apple employee for 16 months, he played a big role in the building of Apple's $1 billion North Carolina data center, according to the Apple Insider blog.

Apple hasn't disclosed how it will use … Read more

Hewlett-Packard has found a buyer for its decades-old campus at 19091 Pruneridge Avenue in Cupertino.

Apple.

About five minutes' drive from Apple headquarters, the 98-acre parcel of land is adjacent to 50 acres Apple acquired back in 2006 and will be used to house a workforce that's expanding nearly as quickly as the market for iOS devices.

"We now occupy 57 buildings in Cupertino and our campus is bursting at the seams," Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told the Mercury News, which first reported the story. "These offices will give us more space for our employees as … Read more

As Research In Motion waits for its PlayBook tablet to counter incursions onto its enterprise turf by Apple's iPhone and iPad gadgets, some of RIM's enterprise sales force have apparently decided not to wait--they've defected to the competition.

Stuart Weinberg of The Wall Street Journal did a little sniffing around on LinkedIn and discovered that in the last year and a half, at least five members of RIM's enterprise sales team have jumped ship and joined Steve Jobs and Co.

Those onetime Researchers In Motion are:

Talk about a smart tech buy. An Apple computer purchased more than 30 years ago has sold for 425 times its original selling price.

An Apple-1, one of only about 200 such machines built in Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' parents' garage, sold at Christie's auction house in London today for 133,250 pounds (about $210,700). The Apple-1, which didn't include a casing, power supply, keyboard, or monitor, originally retailed for $666.66 in 1976. Apple discontinued the model in 1977.

Christie's called the computer a "historic relic" and said the auction included all the … Read more

More than a year since Google CEO Eric Schmidt's departure from Apple's board, the company has elected a replacement.

Going in a completely different direction than Schmidt's expertise in online search and advertising, Apple today announced the appointment of Ronald Sugar, former chairman and CEO of aerospace and defense giant Northrop Grumman. Sugar will head the board's Audit and Finance Committee.

CEO Steve Jobs emphasized Sugar's engineering background in a statement announcing the appointment.

"Ron is an engineer at heart, who then became a very successful business leader. We are very excited to welcome … Read more

This had better be good.

Apple has promised us--by plastering it all over its home page--that "tomorrow is just another day" that we'll "never forget," thanks to an "exciting announcement from iTunes."

This naturally has thrown the tech news hype machine into high gear. What could Apple have to say? Language like that implies something pretty big. Apple, of course, is no stranger to hyperbole in its marketing messages--think the "magical and revolutionary" iPad.

While that phrase is pretty dramatic, to be fair, the iPad actually ended up being industry-altering. And … Read more