In its efforts to hasten the development of its products and bring to market more devices, Cupertino,California-based Apple Inc has added hundreds of engineers and supply-chain managers to its team in Asia, particularly in Taiwan, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Sources familiar with the matter told The WSJ that the tech giant is getting engineers from HTC Corp and other Taiwanese technology companies to strengthen its teams in Shanghai and Taipei. The move signifies the tech giant's need for more engineers who can work with Asian suppliers to come up with iPhone and iPad components in its quest to deploy more products to the market at a much faster pace. After being criticized for the factory conditions in some of its suppliers, Apple has also ramped up the number of its supply chain managers, the report said.

In August, Apple used LinkedIn to send the message to engineers working at HTC, Inventec Corp and Quanta Computer Inc, among others, to give them the message that they were in town. The WSJ quoted Apple's recruiting email as saying, "Apple is building an engineering team in Taipei to drive new iPhone product development."  

A VentureBeat report said HTC, which had not met its fourth quarter earnings targets, struggled last year and is now pressured to introduce a new phone that the market will welcome. "Its engineers jumping ship and now contributing their knowledge of local engineer-manufacturing relationships and local consumers is likely not a welcome development," the report said.

While Apple did not provide figures of its staff in China, sources told The WSJ that there are now more than 600 engineers and operations staff there.

Research company IDC has revealed that Apple's share of the smartphone market declined 17.9% in the fourth quarter compared to the 20.9% share it had the year before. Apple is dealing with the fierce competition that other players, selling cheaper phones built on Google's Android OS, are offering to customers.