Consumer electronics manufacturer Apple apparently has big plans for its iPhone operating system going forward. A recent job posting revealed that Apple was looking forward a software engineer with knowledge of hardware design to port Apple iPhone OS to new types of devices.

“The Core Platform team within Apple’s Core OS organization is looking for a talented and inspired manager to lead a team focused on bring-up of iPhone OS on new platforms. The team is responsible for low level platform architecture, firmware, core drivers and bring-up of new hardware platforms,” the description at Apple’s web-site reads.

This position requires a very technical and hands-on leader, experience in working closely with hardware team and a deep understanding of bare metal software.

It is naturally not revealed what kind of products Apple plans to launch in the future, however, we do know that the company is developing its own system-on-chip devices internally and the range of consumer electronics that Apple might release is pretty wide. For example, it could attach a keyboard to the iPad and launch a netbook, or it could install its own chips into Apple TV set-top-box along with iPhone OS to give its users an access to loads of entertainment software developed for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Still, considering the fact that Apple specifically claims about new platforms, we may see a number of brand new devices rather than iPhone OS on a Macbook Air.

It is interesting to note that Apple has always said it was not interested in creation of inexpensive mobile phones or computers since they did not offer high-quality experience that the company claims it is known for. Nevertheless, throughout the history the company did feature inexpensive devices in its product ranges: Mac Mini and iPod Shuffle are just two examples. Perhaps, porting iPhone OS to new types of devices that feature custom-designed Apple SoCs will allow the company to finally meet high quality experience and at least relatively low prices. At the end of the day, the markets that actually grow rapidly these days are price-sensitive and Apple cannot ignore this fact completely.

Job responsibilities of the engineer include the following:

• Leadership and management of a team of talented software engineers in a fast-paced and demanding software development environment;
• Working closely with the hardware and custom silicon teams to bring-up new platforms and prototype systems;
• Defining the software roadmap to support a range of hardware platforms, including iPhone and iPod;
• Lead the team’s assistance in requirements for future hardware and custom silicon.

Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, iPad, macbook