Sometimes projects just don’t work out.
Apple has confirmed that the company is laying off more than 700 employees following the cancelation of its Apple Car project and is also reconsidering the project to develop in-house Micro-LED displays. The layoffs became known after the company filed WARN notices in the state of California.
Per 9to5Mac, and as seen in the WARN report provided by the California Employment Development Department, the layoffs affect projects that have been in the news recently. Apple is currently laying off 58 employees from one of its offices in Santa Clara. This particular office belonged to LuxVue Technology, a company specializing in Micro-LED displays that Apple acquired in 2014.
There are also more layoff notices filed by Apple which are thought to be part of an effort for Apple to produce its own Micro-LED displays for the Apple Watch. Bloomberg noted that Apple gave up on the project because the screens “were difficult to produce in sufficient quantities.” Additional layoffs include Apple staff from a San Diego office, where a Siri data operations office had been located. The office was responsible for evaluating Siri’s responses to users and for helping the company improve the platform’s accuracy.
At the time, Apple offered to relocate all affected employees to offices in Austin, Texas, if they agreed.
The Worker Adjustment and Retaining Notification (WARN) effort aims to protect employees by requiring employers to give a 60-day notice to affected employees and both state and local representatives before a plant closing or mass layoff. This gives laid-off employees time to adjust and transition to new jobs. Apple is noted as generally trying to reallocate employees from canceled projects to other departments, and some of the engineers working on the Apple Car have been offered positions to work on AI-related features at Apple. However, not everyone had the chance to be reassigned since more than 2,000 people were working on this specific project.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.