Apple on hiring spree, no wires attached
Charging mat missing in action as giant hunts talent
Tech giant Apple has launched a quiet hiring spree in Auckland a year after purchasing local startup PowerbyProxi. The beefing up of its New Zealand staff comes as the iPhone maker stays conspicuously silent about the AirPower mat, which PowerbyProxi was understood to be working on.
Some would have been hoping that last week’s Apple product launch would be the shining moment for the Auckland startup, bought by the US behemoth last year for a price revealed as $100 million-plus in an Overseas Investment Office filing.
After all, last October as Apple first revealed its PowerbyProxi purchase, it also demonstrated a wireless power mat which lets you charge multiple devices at once by laying them on its surface (Samsung already has a similar product on the market for $179). The US tech giant said the AirPower mat, as it was dubbed, would be released in 2018. The stage was set.
But last Thursday, as Apple took the wraps off its new products, close observers of the company noticed AirPower was Awol.
A representative for Apple Australia-New Zealand had no comment when approached yesterday.
But indications are that PowerbyProxi will not end up as one of the local tech companies which are toyed with then forgotten by a multibilliondollar US buyer.
The Herald visited PowerbyProxi’s central Auckland office yesterday, to find it had been vacated earlier in the month.
The shift, from a worn building opposite a New World to its own floor in the Datacom building at trendy Wynyard Quarter, seems an upgrade.
PowerbyProxi co-founder and chief executive Fady Mishriki now bills himself on social network website LinkedIn as managing director at Apple, New Zealand. Mishriki was not immediately available to talk, and other staff were reluctant to offer details. But one fact is public: Apple is in hiring mode, with four Aucklandbased roles being advertised on its website. All are for highend wireless power technology roles, and come on top of 11 similar local positions advertised in March. The ads imply that some of Apple’s most exciting R&D is happening in Auckland. “The Wireless Power Technology team develops bleeding-edge wireless charging designs,” one says. Another adds that the successful applicant will “help drive the resolution of ambiguous problems”.
And that’s probably the rub. New technology products are typically fraught with glitches and delays. Another factor in the mix: PowerbyProxi qualified for up to $25m in matching R&D funds from Crown agency Callaghan Innovation for a five-year period ending this December. It might rankle some that the world’s most profitable company could be receiving a subsidy from the taxpayer. But it is a condition of recent Callaghan Grants that most R&D activity must be kept in NZ after a buyout, or funds returned. PowerbyProxi, born out of research at the University of Auckland, held more than 300 patents by the time of last year’s takeover.