“United States tech giant Apple has opened a developer academy in Bumi Serpong Damai on the outskirts of Jakarta as part of its move to comply with a government regulation on local content requirements (TKDNs),” Winny Tang reports for The Jakarta Post. “The newly opened Apple Developer Academy is the first in Asia and third in the world, with two other academies located in Italy and Brazil. Apple plans to open at least two more academies, one in Java and another outside of Java.”
“Based on the government regulation, there is a 30-percent local content requirement for all 4G gadgets sold in Indonesia. The TKDN is calculated based on manufacturing, software and innovation development. To comply with the regulation, Apple chose to use the TKDN calculation with a focus on innovation development, Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto said on Monday,” Tang reports. “‘In the past, [the public thought] TKDNs were about hardware. However, it is also about innovation,’ the minister told reporters during the inauguration of the academy in Tangerang, Banten.”
“Discussions about a plan by Apple to invest in the construction of a research and development (R&D) center in Indonesia began circulating in local media in August 2017,” Tang reports. “However, the tech giant decided to build an innovation center, instead of an R&D center for hardware and software.”
“The academy, inaugurated by Apple on Monday in collaboration with Binus University, trains local students to develop applications for the iOS operating system, with a total investment of US$44 million from 2017 to 2019. The academy is situated on 1,500 square meters of land in BSD City, Tangerang. The tech giant agreed to rent the space from property developer Sinar Mas Land for five years,” Tang reports. “Apple-trained instructors have been teaching 75 Binus students at the academy as part of a one-year program. Students are being taught programming languages Objective-C and Swift. Swift is Apple’s programming language, which was created to build apps for iOS, Apple TV and Apple Watch.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Congrats, Indonesia!
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s first Indonesian R&D center to open in second quarter – March 30, 2017
More steps building healthy relationships around the world. Sure beats building a wall to hide behind like gutless cowards.