Tim Cook and developers in China pose for photos — image credit: Shanghai Daily
During his latest China visit, Tim Cook visited Zhejiang University to announce Apple’s donation of $4.1 million to support its iOS developer education program.
Following Apple’s expansion of the China Clean Energy Fund, and also donating to rural education in the country, Tim Cook has unveiled the Apple Mobile Application Incubation Fund. It’s being established in partnership with Zhejiang University, which is now famous for being the alma mater of Liang Wenfeng, founder of the DeepSeek AI technology.
According to local news site ChosunBiz, Cook surprised the university’s students with an appearance at a 10th anniversary celebration of Zhejiang’s “Mobile App Innovation Competition.” Apple has supported the competition for its whole ten years, and overall contributed $6.9 million to the program.
“We are honored to deepen our 10-year partnership with Zhejiang University to provide technological support to the next generation of developers,” said Cook, “helping them to develop innovative applications and thrive in entrepreneurship.”
In a statement on its Chinese website (in translation), Apple announced that it would now donate $4.1 million to the new Apple Mobile Application Incubation Fund.
“We believe that programming is a powerful tool that allows people to create, communicate and solve problems in a new way,” continued Cook.
“We are very happy to continue to cooperate closely and deeply with Apple,” Ren Shaobo, Secretary of the Party Committee of Zhejiang University, said in the same statement. “We will give full play to the respective advantages of both sides and work together to cultivate new quality talents with comprehensive development of knowledge, ability, quality and personality through the Apple Mobile Application Incubation Fund.”
The original Mobile Application Innovation Competition started with 161 universities across Greater China, and has since grown to almost 1,000 universities. Over 30,000 participants have benefited, including ones from underdeveloped regions such as Gansu and Guizhou.
Now the Apple Mobile Application Incubation Fund will create professional courses ranging from development to product design, and marketing. With seminars and mentorship programs, it is intended to train participants to develop both their own apps and their own businesses.
