Apple To Open AI-Focused R&D Center In Japan

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told the Nikkei Asian Review Monday (Oct. 17) the company will open a research and development base in Yokohama, near Tokyo, later in 2016.

Speaking during an interview, Cook said the facility, which will be the first of its kind outside of the U.S., will develop AI and other technologies. Cook told the paper it would be a center for “deep engineering” and will be much different than the research and development base the company is gearing up to build in China.

“I cannot tell you the specifics,” he said. “The specific work is very different.”

The report noted Cook said Apple plans to capitalize on AI in lots of different ways in Japan with the full cooperation of Japanese companies. He said AI runs across all products and is used in ways that people have never thought about.

“We want the AI to increase your battery life” and recommend music to Apple Music subscribers, Cook said, according to the report. AI could also “help you remember where you parked your car.”

In addition to developing AI in Japan, Apple’s Cook said the company plans to put more resources into mobile payments in Japan, as well as in other Asian markets. The new iPhone 7, for example, became the first smartphone to work with Japan’s FeliCa contactless payment system. When asked why Apple Pay will use the FeliCa standard, Cook said Japan is an important market for Apple, and since FeliCa was born in Japan, “by extension, FeliCa is important.”

In late August, reports surfaced that Apple will tweak Apple Pay to make it easy for users to pay for their mass transit rides with a tap of their phone. IPhones able to do this will need to come equipped with FeliCa, a mobile tap-to-pay standard developed by Sony. FeliCa is a largely unknown technology in the Americas and Europe, where NFC and QR codes tend to dominate, but in Japan, it is a dominant factor, with 1.9 million payment terminals nationwide.