Report: Apple Hiring Hundreds Of Engineers In China To Speed Up iPhone Development

As the company ramps up to release a rumored Apple TV update, iWatch, two larger iPhones, and CarPlay, Apple has hired as many as 600 engineers and operations staff in China and Taiwan.

For those worried that the days of "Designed in California, Assembled in China" are coming to an end, there's nothing to fret over.

According to The Wall Street Journal's Eva Dou, the engineers will primarily be working with suppliers on the engineering of components for touch screens and cameras used in its iPhone and iPad lines. Meanwhile, traditional research and development will continue to take place in Apple's home base in Cupertino, Calif.

While hundreds of engineers sounds like a lot, it's not actually that big of a chunk of Apple's global workforce. Back in September, the company announced that it currently has a global workforce of 80,300 - meaning its recent hiring "blitz" (to use Dou's phrasing) grew total staff by about three-quarters of a percent.