SAN FRANCISCO, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Apple on Tuesday announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference virtually, beginning June 22, in the Apple Developer app and on the Apple Developer website for free for all developers.

The company also announced the Swift Student Challenge, an opportunity for student developers to showcase their love of coding by creating their own Swift playground.

Now in its 31st year, WWDC20 will be an opportunity for millions of creative and innovative developers around the world to get early access to the future of its operating systems and to learn from Apple engineers as they work to build app experiences, the company said.

"WWDC20 will be our biggest yet, bringing together our global developer community of more than 23 million in an unprecedented way for a week in June to learn about the future of Apple platforms," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

"Students are an integral part of the Apple developer community, and last year WWDC saw attendance from more than 350 student developers spanning 37 different countries," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering. "As we look forward to WWDC20, although our gathering will be virtual this year, we want to recognize and celebrate the creative contributions of our young developers from around the world."

There are more than half a billion people visiting the App Store in 175 countries and regions every week, according to the company.