During the keynote, Apple highlighted new features in its Mac operating system and iOS just for Chinese customers. Its Mountain Lion operating system includes improved gesture recognition for writing Chinese characters with a trackpad, a new Chinese dictionary and easier setup for Chinese e-mail services. Siri is also being upgraded to understand Mandarin and Cantonese.
China is a big market that Apple wants its developers to cater to as well. “Get your apps ready for China,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, to the software developers in the audience.
It is no mystery why Apple is making such a determined push in China. During Apple’s fiscal second quarter, sales of the iPhone in China helped double its profit from the year-ago quarter. For that time period, Apple’s revenue from China was $7.9 billion, about 20 percent of total company revenue.
Putting yourself in Apple’s shoes, the decision to make China a priority seems obvious. If the iPhone is selling really well there, why not use it as bait to reel them into buying Mac computers, too? It certainly has worked in the United States, where Apple’s share of the PC market has climbed steadily in the iPhone era.