Steve Jobs proposes Apple 'spaceship' HQ

Apple chief executive (CEO) Steve Jobs has proposed plans for a giant new headquarters.

The iPhone maker has bought an old HP property and some adjacent land, overall measuring in at around 150 acres, Jobs revealed on Tuesday.

Apple's current HQ can cater for around 2,600 to 2,800 workers but the company has far more employees working in Cupertino, Jobs said.

"We've got almost 12,000 people in the area, so we're renting buildings, not very good buildings either, at an ever greater radius from our campus," Jobs told the Cupertino City Council.

"It's clear that we need to build a new campus. That doesn't mean we don't need the one we've got, we do need it, but we need another one to augment it."

The building forms a ring shape with a courtyard in the middle.

On showing the graphic for what the building would look like from the air, Jobs said it was "a little like a spaceship landed."

"There's not a straight piece of glass in this building," Jobs added.

"We want to break ground next year and we want to move in by 2015."

He told the council Apple planned to have the carpark based underground, meaning more tress could be planted.

Apple wants to almost double the number of trees on the site from 3,700 to 6,000.

The announcements came a day after Apple unveiled iOS 5, the iCloud and Mac OS X Lion.

Silicon investment

Outside of investing in property, Apple has also been spending heavily on silicon.

According to research released this week, in 2010 the Cupertino firm became the largest buyer of semiconductors among original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for the first time ever.

Apple bought $17.5 billion (10.7 billion) worth of semiconductors, a 79.6 percent increase from $9.7 billion in 2009 in that year, HIS iSuppli said.

"Apple's surge to leadership in semiconductor spending in 2010 was driven by the overwhelming success of its wireless products, namely the iPhone and the iPad," said Wenlie Ye, analyst for IHS.

"These products consume enormous quantities of NAND flash memory, which is also found in the Apple iPod. Because of this, Apple in 2010 was the world's number one purchaser of NAND flash."