Last quarter has been amazing for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), as the company reported record breaking earnings in its financial statements that it reported last month. The company reported $18 billion worth of earnings in the fourth quarter of 2014, the largest figure reported by any company for the quarter in the given context.
According to analysts, the credit for such a record breaking figure must be given to record breaking sales figure for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which was launched in Q4 2014. The company is now looking forward to the release of the upcoming Apple Watch (expected to be launched in March 2015), which would further boost up the sales figure for Apple Inc. going strong with a strengthening demand of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models.
With the revenue side of the company all set, Apple Inc. is now shifting its focus to developing its data command center for better communication and storage facilities. With its ever increasing user base all over the world, especially its recently exploding market in China (Apple’s largest market in the world), it has now become imperative for the company to expand its technological capability to cater to the ever growing needs of its exponentially increasing user base.
In a recent report, Apple Inc. revealed the company is now investing over $2 billion for the development of a data center, capable of handling the increasing bandwidth requirement of the company. The new data center is expected to be developed in Arizona, and would be developed in the same location the company had a sapphire manufacturing plant (for the development of quality screens for the iPhone smartphones). The sapphire manufacturing plant failed to operate due to cost implications, and now the company seems to have found a new use for the location.
The new facility is expected to create employment opportunities for over 150 people, all full-time. The data center would have command capabilities installed within it, and would allow Apple to operate its data centers that exist all over the world. The facility is also expected to create and run on its own energy, as, according to credible reports, Apple Inc. plans to invest in a separate solar energy facility, capable of producing over 70MW of electricity, which would be more than enough to power the command data center.
However, this data center would not become operational in the current fiscal year. According to an Apple Inc. spokesperson, construction of the data center would begin in 2016, as the premises it hopes to build the new data and command center on currently has remnants from its, now failed, sapphire manufacturing plant, which would take some time in clearing out. The site is 1.3 sq foot in size.
The sapphire manufacturing plant had a total investment of $1 billion, which has gone down the drain. But, for a company of Apple Inc.’s size, such a loss is infinitesimal at best.
The site being cleared out for the new data center is the same that GTAT used to develop sapphire screen technology for the Apple iPhone. GTAT recently filed for bankruptcy, allegedly due to Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) failure to pay in timely manner, resulting in elimination of hundreds of job opportunities by the project. However, the construction of the new data center will create back hundreds of jobs in Arizona, a move welcomed by the Arizonian government, which has allocated $10 million to smooth out Apple’s plans.