Newshot Registration Hits Record High as the 11th "Mobile Application Innovation Contest" Concludes Successfully
On November 8 (Beijing time), the 11th "Mobile Application Innovation Contest" completed its final judging and held its awards ceremony at Zhejiang University's Zijingang Campus.
Starting from 161 universities in 2016, this competition—hosted by the National Research Association for Computer Education in Higher Education Institutions and jointly organized by Zhejiang University and Apple—has now cumulatively covered more than 1,000 universities across the country and attracted nearly 50,000 participants.
Last year, the "Enlightenment" track opened to students from higher vocational colleges for the first time, making the Mobile Application Innovation Contest the only competition under the China Collegiate Computing Contest to achieve full academic-path coverage. This year, the number of participating higher vocational colleges grew nearly fourfold compared with last year, and registration numbers tripled; the middle school group, meanwhile, no longer only displayed works but for the first time was able to participate in the formal competitive tracks.
From middle school students, vocational and university students, to young developers and supply chain employees within five years of graduation, this year's Mobile Application Innovation Contest across all tracks drew nearly 12,000 registrations, with registration numbers exceeding 10,000 for the first time. Among all participants, 40% came from non-computer majors, and nearly half had no prior programming experience.
Among the teams that reached the finals this year, 98% made deep use of large language models, and 85% used AI to assist the complete development process; the number of works on the visionOS platform also doubled compared with last year. Among the finalist works, 5 have already been officially released on the App Store, and another 16 are currently in TestFlight testing.
The highest award of this year's Mobile Application Innovation Contest, the "Most Innovative Award," went to HoloGrip, a 3D virtual experiment platform running on iPad, independently completed by Wan Chunyu, a student majoring in Automation Technology and Application at Nanjing Vocational University of Industry Technology.
Wan Chunyu's idea for developing HoloGrip came from his own middle school experience. At the time, out of cost and safety considerations, the school did not organize students to do hands-on physics and chemistry experiments. He hopes that with HoloGrip, students who similarly lack experimental conditions can also observe and operate experimental processes, rather than merely memorizing conclusions from textbooks.
HoloGrip uses the iPad's front camera to recognize hand movements. Users only need to pinch, rotate, or move their fingers to operate the experimental equipment and 3D models in the app and observe experimental processes such as air compression ignition and acid-base reactions; solid geometry problems can also be converted into 3D models that can be rotated and disassembled.
Wan Chunyu said that HoloGrip began development in April this year and underwent three major version rewrites within half a year; the app's development process used AI to assist with early planning and asset generation, but from product design to development and on-site demonstrations, the main work was all completed by him personally.
Currently, HoloGrip has not yet been released on the App Store. Wan Chunyu said that in the future he will open-source the project long-term under the AGPL-3.0 license, continue to add experimental content, and try to add hardware connectivity so that virtual experiments can be combined with real operations.
The Social Responsibility Award in the same group went to Sarta Yin. This app, aimed at learning and passing on the Dongxiang language, was jointly developed by Deng Bowen, Ma Xuehua, and Gao Jiaduo, students majoring in Internet of Things Engineering Technology at Lanzhou Petrochemical University of Vocational Technology.
Dongxiang is the language used by the Dongxiang ethnic group, belongs to the Mongolic language family, and is mainly distributed in Gansu. Because there is no commonly used writing system of its own ethnicity, Dongxiang has long relied mainly on oral transmission. Team members found that fewer and fewer peers around them could speak Dongxiang, so they developed Sarta Yin, hoping to record and preserve the language and also provide a tool for learning and communication for young Dongxiang people and language enthusiasts.
Sarta Yin is developed based on SwiftUI and uses ARKit and AVFoundation to implement AR display and on-device audio comparison. Users can learn Dongxiang on iPhone or iPad and understand their own pronunciation by reading along.
Having first encountered Swift in 2025, the students completed topic selection, research, prototyping, testing, release, and roadshows during the competition. This competition also made them realize that code can not only implement functions but also bear the responsibility of recording and cultural inheritance.
Currently, Sarta Yin has been released on the App Store. The team will next continue to add corpus and interaction methods, improve read-along assessment, and at the same time optimize app size and runtime performance.
In addition to continuing the track demonstrations and judging from previous years, this year's Mobile Application Innovation Contest also showcased the incubation results of 20 teams from the first Apple App Incubator.
Over nearly half a year, these teams received guidance in technical development, product design, marketing, and business operations. Unlike the Mobile Application Innovation Contest, teams entering the Apple App Incubator also need to continue validating user demand, market performance, and business models after the product launch. Not only are the judging dimensions more complex, but the judging requirements are also stricter.
We hope good ideas can have lasting vitality. The contest is only a starting point. To this end, we announced the launch of the Apple App Incubator at last year's finals. Among the shortlisted entrepreneurs, there are also contestants who were once contestants in the contest just like you. Just yesterday, our first batch of teams graduated, producing many wonderful apps, and quite a few have already reached the world stage. I very much look forward to the day when you can also bring your works into the incubator and transform from student developers into entrepreneurs! We believe innovation needs to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities. In you, I see this infinite possibility. I hope everyone can maintain this passion and create truly good products that change lives!
We hope good ideas can have lasting vitality. The contest is only a starting point. To this end, we announced the launch of the Apple App Incubator at last year's finals. Among the shortlisted entrepreneurs, there are also contestants who were once contestants in the contest just like you. Just yesterday, our first batch of teams graduated, producing many wonderful apps, and quite a few have already reached the world stage. I very much look forward to the day when you can also bring your works into the incubator and transform from student developers into entrepreneurs!
We believe innovation needs to stand at the intersection of technology and the humanities. In you, I see this infinite possibility. I hope everyone can maintain this passion and create truly good products that change lives!
At the final judging and recognition event, Isabel Ge Mahe, Apple's Vice President and Managing Director of Greater China, also congratulated the developers present and offered sincere wishes.
Over eleven years, the Mobile Application Innovation Contest has given more and more students from different backgrounds the opportunity to turn ideas into apps, and has also helped many students become developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and even educators, giving back to the competition in turn. The continuous growth of the competition's scale and the continuous improvement of participant standards also, to a certain extent, reflect the outstanding performance and contributions of Chinese developers in the global app ecosystem. It is also hoped that in next year's competition, more ideas will be seen and more innovations will be realized.