Apple To Invest In China, Open Up Joint R&D Center

Apple, dealing with a maturing iPhone market in the U.S. and declining demand in China, is raising its investments in the Asian country by announcing it is building a research and development center — a first for China.

According to a report, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Tuesday (Aug. 16) the new research and development center will be completed by the end of 2016, marking its first Asia-Pacific research and development center in China. The research center will focus on developing brand new products and technology and “strengthening relationships with local partners and universities,” an Apple spokesman told The Wall Street Journal. “We look forward to expanding our operations in China with a new research and development center as we continue to grow our talented team here,” the spokesman said.

The move is designed to increase its business in China, where demand has fallen and the government is wary of technology from companies outside the country. A report noted Apple’s new commitment in China comes after China’s industry and technology regulator told Cook in May that he hopes China and Apple could work together on research and development products in China. The regulator stressed the information shared would be secure. In May, Apple also announced it was investing $1 billion in Didi Chuxing Technology, the China-based ride-hailing app company. Some reports said Apple partly made the investment to win favor with China.

Rewind a few years, and China was supposed to be the next bastion of growth for Apple. But it didn’t turn out that way. But not only is Apple dealing with slackening demand for its iPhones, but its eBooks and movies were shut down by China, losing more sales and mindshare for Apple. It has also lost intellectual property fights in the country and faced an anti-U.S backlash from consumers.

But Apple wasn’t the only one making moves this week. See below for all the latest news in investments for the week ended Aug. 12.

The Week In Investments

FinTech roared back with a vengeance after several weeks of decidedly impressive growth within the B2B space, and this time around the FinTech space was 91 percent of all fund flows in the week that ended Aug. 12.

But the numbers tell a story where, as has been seen before, the scales were tipped to a few big deals – and actually, in this case, really, one big deal. Florida-based EverBank Financial Corp. said last week that it had agreed to sell itself to TIAA for $2.5 billion, in a deal that will close by the middle of next year. The acquisition, according to the financial press, will boost TIAA’s presence in financial services, especially the digital kind.

Technology and logistics firm BlueGrace garnered a $255 million investment from Warburg Pincus, where that minority stake will be used to fund as many as 700 positions and to expand elsewhere in the United States.

The Pindrop, which helps fight phone-based fraud, got a $80 million investment from Google Capital, and the series C investment marked the latter’s fourth cybersecurity investment.

With the resurgence in FinTech, it’s still worth a look to see that the sector thus far this month has been dominated by banking at 90 percent of that arena’s activity.