Apple expects to expand its Silicon Valley workforce by nearly 50 percent during the next three years in a sign of the company's confidence in its ability to keep coming up with hit products such as the iPhone and iPad.

The projections detailed in a report released Tuesday envision Apple hiring 7,400 more workers at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters between now and the planned completion of a new office complex in 2016. Apple Inc. now employs about 16,000 people in and around Cupertino, the company's home town for most of its 37-history.

Apple submitted the report to Cupertino city officials as part of its effort to win approval to build a new 3.4 million-square-foot campus that former CEO Steve Jobs likened to a spaceship shortly before he died in 2011.