Apple taking aim at Chinese market with Mountain Lion, iOS 6
Apple actively promoted on Monday new Chinese-language features in both OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and iOS 6 that should help it ramp up sales in the world's most populous nation.
The sharp focus that Apple has brought to bear on the Chinese market was evident on Monday during a keynote presentation to kick off the Worldwide Developers Conference. While talking up new additions to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, head of Mac Software Engineering Craig Federighi presented a segment on "Features for China" in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
"One area I want to highlight especially are some features we're adding for China," he said. "The Mac has been growing fantastically in China and we have some wonderful features that we think are going to make it even more popular there."
The additions included an improved Chinese Pinyin input method, a new dictionary and eight Chinese fonts. Safari in OS X Mountain Lion will also add the popular Chinese search engine Baidu as a search option, support for micro-blogging via Sina Weibo and video sharing selections for Youku and Tudou. Federighi also mentioned the inclusion of easy setup of popular Chinese email services coming to Mountain Lion.
"It's going to be important. Get your apps ready for China," he said to the assembled crowd of developers.
Later in the presentation, Scott Forstall, Apple's president of iOS Software, talked about upcoming Siri support for Mandarin and Cantonese in iOS 6. The new language support will make good on a promise that company made last year to teach Siri Chinese in 2012. Siri's Chinese language abilities will include Mandarin, tuned for both Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, and Cantonese, tuned for Hong Kong and the mainland.
"As part of making Siri more international, we're now taking local search, which was U.S.-only in iOS, around the world. So you can now do local search even in China," Forstall said.
Responding to Monday's keynote, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty called Apple's China-specific features "significant investments" that the company is making to reach the market. She believes that focus on China will be "key to long-term growth." The investment bank expects increased sales of the iPhone in the region to contribute 33 percent of incremental revenue for Apple in calendar 2013.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said in April during a quarterly earnings call that the company's revenue in China has been "mind-boggling." The region brought in $7.39 billion in revenue during the March quarter, driven largely by iPhone sales, which were up five times that of the year ago quarter. The executive said the iPhone and iPad are creating an "incredible" halo of demand for Macs, which were up more than 60 percent year over year during the quarter. Cook noted that an "enormous number of people" in China are moving into the middle class and Apple is doing everything it can to understand the market and capitalize on the opportunity.
The sharp focus that Apple has brought to bear on the Chinese market was evident on Monday during a keynote presentation to kick off the Worldwide Developers Conference. While talking up new additions to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, head of Mac Software Engineering Craig Federighi presented a segment on "Features for China" in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
"One area I want to highlight especially are some features we're adding for China," he said. "The Mac has been growing fantastically in China and we have some wonderful features that we think are going to make it even more popular there."
The additions included an improved Chinese Pinyin input method, a new dictionary and eight Chinese fonts. Safari in OS X Mountain Lion will also add the popular Chinese search engine Baidu as a search option, support for micro-blogging via Sina Weibo and video sharing selections for Youku and Tudou. Federighi also mentioned the inclusion of easy setup of popular Chinese email services coming to Mountain Lion.
"It's going to be important. Get your apps ready for China," he said to the assembled crowd of developers.
Later in the presentation, Scott Forstall, Apple's president of iOS Software, talked about upcoming Siri support for Mandarin and Cantonese in iOS 6. The new language support will make good on a promise that company made last year to teach Siri Chinese in 2012. Siri's Chinese language abilities will include Mandarin, tuned for both Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, and Cantonese, tuned for Hong Kong and the mainland.
"As part of making Siri more international, we're now taking local search, which was U.S.-only in iOS, around the world. So you can now do local search even in China," Forstall said.
Responding to Monday's keynote, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty called Apple's China-specific features "significant investments" that the company is making to reach the market. She believes that focus on China will be "key to long-term growth." The investment bank expects increased sales of the iPhone in the region to contribute 33 percent of incremental revenue for Apple in calendar 2013.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said in April during a quarterly earnings call that the company's revenue in China has been "mind-boggling." The region brought in $7.39 billion in revenue during the March quarter, driven largely by iPhone sales, which were up five times that of the year ago quarter. The executive said the iPhone and iPad are creating an "incredible" halo of demand for Macs, which were up more than 60 percent year over year during the quarter. Cook noted that an "enormous number of people" in China are moving into the middle class and Apple is doing everything it can to understand the market and capitalize on the opportunity.
Comments
I wonder how much of China's expected growth is priced into today's AAPL?
[QUOTE]Craig Federighi: "It's going to be important. Get your apps ready for China."[/QUOTE]
I hear you brother.
[QUOTE]Morgan Stanley: "China will be "key to long-term growth." [/QUOTE]
I'm picking up what you're putting down.
Despite all of the well deserved hype about all of the other features announced, this one is probably the most important, financially.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ifij775
Despite all of the well deserved hype about all of the other features announced, this one is probably the most important, financially.
Dui. Chong Hua she hen important de something something. Gawd I need to brush up on my Mandarin.
Yes! Finally, Canadian English and Mandarin will be supported by Siri!
I generally entered Pinyin using the Mac (copying and pasting my characters into Word) because I found Windows' Pinyin input method to be horrendously clunky and the resulting choices of characters presented to be comparatively unreadable. How the vast majority of China puts up with that crap is beyond me (no doubt only doing so because they haven't seen the alternatives).
Apple has improved on this? I'm looking forward to trying it. Now if only they can get the word out to the 1+ billion people in China that there is a better way…
Why didn't you just create in Pages then simply export as a word doc? The reason Office and Windows XP are so popular here in China is that it is one of the few places in the world were you can easily buy them at a price that reflects their actual worth. About $1.50 USD each!!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by djames4242
Improved Pinyin input method? I have taken several quarters of Mandarin. This quarter we were required by the instructor (who's husband probably works for Microsoft) to submit our work in .doc format. I have Office installed on my Windows 7 VM but not on my Mac (I asked if I could submit PDF so I could use Pages and she said no).
I generally entered Pinyin using the Mac (copying and pasting my characters into Word) because I found Windows' Pinyin input method to be horrendously clunky and the resulting choices of characters presented to be comparatively unreadable. How the vast majority of China puts up with that crap is beyond me (no doubt only doing so because they haven't seen the alternatives).
Apple has improved on this? I'm looking forward to trying it. Now if only they can get the word out to the 1+ billion people in China that there is a better way…
My colleagues used to use a special thingy for Windows Chinese input. Can't remember what it was but they never used stock Chinese input in Windows. Maybe try http://duckduckgo.com/?q=best chinese input for windows ?
Most Chinese put up with Windows because there's tons of plugins/ utilities/ whatnots that are tailored specifically for Chinese (Simplified & Traditional) input.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FreeRange
Why didn't you just create in Pages then simply export as a word doc? The reason Office and Windows XP are so popular here in China is that it is one of the few places in the world were you can easily buy them at a price that reflects their actual worth. About $1.50 USD each!!!!
Yeah, I did try that - unfortunately Pages support for exporting Word-formatted documents isn't quite there. In particular there was a section each week where we had to draw lines between Chinese characters and their Pinyin equivalents. When I'd open these in Word after exporting from Pages the lines would be all over the place, and never even remotely near the correct words. There were always graphics and icons within the documents which would not be correctly aligned. It's possible it was simply a mismatch of fonts between my Windows VM and the host OS, but rather than trying to work that out I simply found it easier to copy and paste (and to occasionally just live with the horror of Microsoft's stock Pinyin input tool.
Worth $1.50? I think they're worth more than that... I paid $10 each for Office 2010 and Office 2011 through Microsoft's Home Use Program and I feel perfectly justified in spending that much. I bought Windows 7 Ultimate through the Microsoft employee store for $60. That was a total ripoff however...
Quote:
Originally Posted by nvidia2008
My colleagues used to use a special thingy for Windows Chinese input. Can't remember what it was but they never used stock Chinese input in Windows. Maybe try http://duckduckgo.com/?q=best chinese input for windows ?
Most Chinese put up with Windows because there's tons of plugins/ utilities/ whatnots that are tailored specifically for Chinese (Simplified & Traditional) input.
Thanks for that - I didn't think to look for alternatives at the time. My class is over now, however, so any Chinese input I do from this point forward will be in OSX. If I do ever find myself being required to use Windows for Chinese input in the future, I will definitely look into some alternatives (and check in with my Chinese friends to see what they use!).