Apple leases extra office space ahead of HQ 2.0

Apple leases extra office space ahead of HQ 2.0
Apple is said to have inked a deal on new office space near its existing Cupertino, Calif., headquarters that will house up to 1,300 additional employees.The deal, which was reported by the Oakland Tribune yesterday, will give Apple 373,000 square feet in the Results Way Corporate Center, located a few minutes away from Apple's main offices.The extra space is a band-aid while Apple works on approval from the City of Cupertino to begin work on a new campus located across town on 150 acres, some of which was purchased from Hewlett-Packard. When completed, that building promises to hold 12,000 company employees under one roof.While stumping for a new company headquarters last month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that "Apple's growing like a weed," yet its main campus only fits around 2,800 employees. Jobs said the company had around 12,000 employees in the area who were being housed in nearby buildings, some of which were "not very good." "We've seen these office parks with lots of buildings and they get pretty boring pretty fast, so we'd like to do something better than that," Jobs said last month.The day after the pitch for the massive building, Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong said the town was "ready" for the project, and that there was "no chance we're saying no." Nonetheless, Wong noted that the project is being reviewed just like any other building, including a study on various environmental impacts. Following the expected approval next year, Wong said Apple can begin submitting building permits to later break ground on the project, with an estimated completion date of 2015.This is Apple's latest high-profile leasing deal for big space in the area. A report in May from Data Center Knowledge noted that Apple signed a seven-year lease with DuPont Fabros Technology worth 11,000 square feet of data center space in its Santa Clara, Calif., facilities.

Apple leapfrogs RIM in Q3 smartphone sales

Apple leapfrogs RIM in Q3 smartphone sales
Apple CEO Steve Jobs proclaimed earlier this week that his company is leaving RIM in its dust, an now one industry analyst firm has stepped up to corroborate that.GigaOm noted a Strategy Analytics' report today saying that Apple overtook RIM during the third quarter, shipping 15.4 million smartphones compared to RIM's 12.3 million.Nokia, still the worldwide leader of smartphones, shipped 26.5 million devices. But it wasn't just Apple that improved: the entire smartphone market grew to 77 million units, 78 percent better than a year ago, the report states.Strategy Analytics' report echoes, but doesn't exactly match, the numbers Apple shared on its fiscal fourth quarter earnings call Monday. "We sold 14.1 million iPhones in the quarter," Jobs told investors. "It handily beat RIM's 12.1 million BlackBerrys sold for their most recent quarter. We've now passed RIM, and I don't see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future."The BlackBerry maker didn't appreciate Jobs' aggressive comments. Shortly after, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie posted a blogcalling Apple's counting methods into question and accusing Jobs of only telling customers "half" the story.Balsillie pointed out that his company's quarter ended in August, while Apple's ended in September, a traditionally lucrative smartphone-selling period. Strategy Analytics' report also covers three months, but it's not clear which three months it's taking into account.