Apple Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Williams dropped a hint on Wednesday that the company might be interested in exploring the auto sector.
At the Code Conference in California, a member from the audience asked Williams "Are you guys [Apple] going to do something with your $100 billion or are you just going to keep buying back shares? [Television, video games, cars, what categories?]," according to the Verge. To which William's replied, "Well the car is the ultimate mobile device, isn't it?" "We're exploring a lot of different markets," he added.
The executive's comments have recharged speculation that the tech giant has an electric car in development. A few months ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had hundreds of employees working clandestinely on an electric car and the company expected to start production as early as 2020.
When pressed, Williams referred to the potential for CarPlay, a feature announced by Apple last year. Carplay enables users to access Apple services such as iTunes, Apple Maps as and Siri via the vehicle's dashboard information system. A number of automobile manufacturers have already started rolling out the service, according to Business Insider.
Not long after Williams' comments, General Motors CEO Mary Barra revealed that GM would introduce Apple's Carplay and Google's Android Auto features in most of its Chevrolet cars, The Wall Street Journal reported.
