According to a report from Israeli business publication `Globes,' US tech biggie Apple will be opening a new Research & Development center in Ra'anana, Israel, later this year.

The new development center will be opened in the Ra'anana Industrial Zone in "the second half of 2013"; and will be Apple's third development center in the country. The company already has centers in Haifa and Herzliya; and the new center in Ra'anana will be located on the northern side of metropolitan Tel Aviv.

The new Apple R&D center in Israel will reportedly have 100-150 employees, mostly those who lost their jobs at chipmaker Texas Instruments (TI) a few weeks back, after TI's decision to slash the jobs of 250 of its employees. The majority of the employees whose jobs were axed by Texas were working at the company's Israel development center.

Going by the `Globes' report, Apple had hired the ex-TI employees late last year, after they were dismissed by TI as a part of its broad move to cull 1,700 employees across the world.

Though some earlier reports have revealed that the ex-TI employees hired by Apple had been chiefly working on short-range communication technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC, the `Globes' report suggests that the course which Apple has strategically worked out for the new development center will be an entirely different one.