14 DAY TRIAL // Apple is mostly known as the company that makes the iPhone, so it’s in essence considered to be a hardware giant.
However, Apple’s portfolio includes a wide variety of products that also cover the software department, and by the looks of things, the company’s leadership team wants this particular area to be expanded in the long term.
As a result, most of the job openings right now at Apple are aimed at positions related to software development, as discovered by Thinknum (via MacRumors).
This means that while Apple remains fully committed to hardware products like iPhone, iPad, and Macs, it still wants its software division to grow at a faster pace, and this is why it’s hiring aggressively in this regard.
Thinknum says Apple wants more engineers experienced in the software industry than in hardware, most likely as it wants its future devices to run on more advanced software capabilities.
Full focus on software
This makes perfect sense, not only because Apple’s Services unit has become one of the top cash cows for the company, but also because Apple is reportedly planning major upgrades in terms of machine learning, AI, news, and video platforms.
The Cupertino-based company has no other option than to accelerate work on software improvements, especially as hardware upgrades are no longer enough to convince customers to buy new devices.
Living proof is the most recent iPhone generation, whose sales have until now been well below expectations due to a mix of high prices and most improvements. With more than 1.4 billion Apple devices on the globe, Cupertino is now looking beyond hardware to boost sales, and software appears to be the next stop.
I expect Apple to share more on its software plans at the WWDC conference in the summer when the company is also likely to provide us with the first look at the next iOS update.