Apple's Tim Cook promises $1bn for advanced manufacturing fund to create more US jobs

Apple boss Tim Cook has announced the company will be putting $1bn (£778.4m) into an "advanced manufacturing fund" in the US. The investment is aimed at creating more American jobs.

Cook in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday (3 May) said, "By doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond," as the new manufacturing jobs would create new service-industry positions around them. The company will announce the new fund's first investment later in May.

The development came just after Apple reported its second quarter results that ended on 1 April. It posted $52.9bn of revenue for the March quarter, as opposed to the $50.6bn in the year-ago period.

Cook said the Apple has created two million jobs across the 50 states in the US and the company has a total of 80,000 employees in the US, of which about 25,000 are doing the R&D work. The facility in Austin has 6,000 employees who do everything starting from engineering to customer support to financial service, Cook added.

Apple has released a breakdown of where its total 80,000 employees work in the US. It said it has spent more than $50bn with over 9,000 US suppliers and manufacturers. Since the launch of the App Store in 2008, US developers have earned more than $16bn in the App Store sales worldwide, Cook also highlighted.

Apple's latest move fits well with President Donald Trump's pledge to bring back manufacturing jobs to the US. In January, Trump had said of Cook: "I really believe he loves this country and I think he'd like to do something major here. And I told him, I said, 'Tim, it's going to be a big achievement the day you start building some of your big plants in this country instead of other countries.' And I think he's got his eyes open to it."