In a bid to expand its chip-making business in Israel, Apple has reportedly hired a number of former Texas Instruments engineers living in the country, with the new employees said to bolster the tech giant's research and development resources in the region.





People familiar with Apple's developing Israel-based operations told The Next Web that the company has been hiring "dozens" of engineers to work in the cities of Haifa and Herzliya, the latter of which being the home base of purchased the flash memory maker in December of 2011.

The sources went on to say that Apple is picking up former TI employees who were laid off in a culling of 250 jobs at the company's Ra'anana location, which itself is part of a larger global workforce cutdown of around 1,700 employees. According to TI Israel's website, the Ra'anana campus was responsible for wireless connectivity solutions like WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS and OMAP products. OMAP, or Open Multimedia Applications Platform, is a type of system-on-a-chip developed by the Texas-based company currently being used in portable devices like Amazon's Kindle Fire HD.

Apple in April was reported to be gearing up for a major hiring campaign to fill spots at its Israel R&D center located in Haifa's Scientific Industries Center, which boasts a collective of high-tech companies like Google, Intel and IBM. The recent TI Israel hires won't be the first for Apple, as former Deputy CEO Etai Zaitsman is said to be working on the Haifa initiative headed up by Aharon Aharon, a veteran of Israel's tech industry.