Tuesday, June 12, 2012

MacNN | Apple to developers: 'Get your apps ready for China':

App developers must focus more on the Chinese market, according to a senior figure at Apple. Craig Federighi, senior VP of software engineering, notes the sizable increase in app revenues in China, calling on developers to take advantage of the year-on-year growth in the region, according to AllThingsD.

April earnings for Apple showed $7.9 billion from Greater China, a three-fold increase on results from last year. 1H 2012 revenue has already reached $12.4 billion, which is almost the same as revenues for the region during all of last year. "The Mac has been growing fantastically well in China," Federighi comments, adding "Get your apps ready for China." Some new features in iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion have been added explicitly to support China. In iOS 6, Baidu has been added as a new search option in Safari, and the video sites Youku and Tudou are supported as well. An increased catalog of Chinese characters is available in handwriting recognition, and Siri can now understand Cantonese and Mandarin. Mountain Lion builds on these by adding Simplified Chinese support to Lookup, and popular Chinese email services such as QQ Mail to the Mail app.