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More: Apple Sneaks by Android in Fourth Quarter U.S. Smartphone Sales

According to a new report from Israeli business newspaper Calcalist ( via 9to5Mac ), Apple has begun hiring for its research and development center in Haifa, Israel with a goal of opening the center by the end of February. The report claims that Apple has already received "several hundred resumes" from engineers looking to work in the new center, which is being headed up by Apple's newly-hired Israeli high-tech executive Aharon Aharon . The report notes that is likely to set up its research center near existing facilities run by Intel, Microsoft, and Phillips, with Apple seeking expertise in chip development, specifically with electrical circuits and hardware testing and verification

Contrary to some reports , Apple CEO Tim Cook said today that the company hadn't seen any slowdown in iPad sales following the introduction of the much-hyped Kindle Fire tablet. When asked by an analyst during today's quarterly earnings call about the impact on the iPad from lower priced tablets, Cook noted that the company sold a record 15.4 million iPads and that Apple doesn't consider "limited function tablets and e-readers to be in the same category as the iPad". A big reason for the iPads success, Cook believes, is that the ecosystem for the iPad is "in a class by itself".

Apple sold 1.4 million Apple TV set-top boxes in the Q1 2012 quarter, Apple CEO Tim Cook disclosed during today's earnings call .

After today's record breaking results , Apple will be holding a company-wide Town Hall for employees discussing some "exciting new things going on at Apple." Tim Cook sent a company-wide email to employees, as posted by 9to5Mac : Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we’re off to a great start in 2012. Last week in New York we launched a groundbreaking initiative for education with iBooks textbooks, and today we reported the strongest quarter in Apple’s history.Please join me tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. in Town Hall

Earlier this month, Verizon Wireless Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo noted that the carrier had activated 4.2 million iPhones during the fourth quarter of 2011, more than doubling the previous quarter's sales on the momentum of the iPhone 4S launch and potentially signaling a blockbuster quarter for Apple in the iPhone market. Verizon today officially announced its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011, revealing in a conference call that the company actually activated 4.3 million iPhones during the quarter. With the carrier reporting total smartphone sales of 7.7 million units, the iPhone represented approximately 55% of the carrier's smartphone sales for the quarter.

Back in June of last year, IHS iSuppli reported that Apple had become the world's largest buyer of semiconductors in 2010, jumping past HP and Samsung to top the list with $17.5 billion in spending. Apple's lead was expected to grow in 2011 on continued strength of the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air, all of which contain substantial NAND flash memory, which has become a primary driver of semiconductor markets due to the booming mobile device landscape. Research firm Gartner is out today with a new report that appears to utilize a somewhat different methodology in calculating semiconductor expenditures but which now comes to the same conclusion as IHS Suppli's earlier report.

Details of Adam Lashinsky's new Inside Apple book set to debut tomorrow continue to surface, and while some of the ideas behind the company's "Apple University" program for training the next generation of executives were previously disclosed in Lashinsky's original Fortune piece on the topic and in a Los Angeles Times article last October, the new book takes a more extensive look at the concept. As had been previously disclosed, Apple in 2008 hired Yale School of Management dean Joel Podolny to head up the Apple University initiative on management training. Several other professors, including Harvard business historian Richard Tedlow, came on board in consulting roles to help develop the curriculum

iPod nano packaging photo by iLounge From an advance copy of Adam Lashinsky's upcoming Inside Apple book, NetworkWorld notes an interesting bit of information about how Apple approaches retail packaging. Perhaps it should be no surprise, given the elegance of some of Apple's product packages, but Apple is said to have a secretive packaging room where a package designer goes through hundreds of iterations to find the right combination: One after another, the designer created and tested an endless series of arrows, colors, and tapes for a tiny tab designed to show the consumer where to pull back the invisible, full-bleed sticker adhered to the top of the clear iPod box. Getting it just right was this particular designer's obsession.