Apple's favourite country has got to be China

Monday, June 13, 2016

Apple's favourite country has got to be China

Apple keynotes usually focus on things in the United States with subtle hints of other countries from time to time but during the WWDC 2016 keynote this morning, Apple made a big statement. China is an important market to Apple and they are embracing their presence. It seems that last year's first-wave launch of the iPhone 6S in China was just the start.

At this point, is not secret that Apple has a thing for China. They have more Apple Stores in China than any other region outside the US. Not only that, Chinese people also love the iPhone hence there are so many Chinese phones out there that try to mimic the look of iOS. But my point here is that Apple has never done such a thing before and this keynote makes is clear that Apple is ready to take on the Chinese market with full force.

The Apple Store experience in China and Hong Kong — "there's something pretty marvelous about the Shenzhen Apple Store in particular compared to the other three Apple Stores in Hong Kong and that is there are actually a couple of table and chairs outside the store themselves and the free Wi-Fi actually works from those seats." Continue reading.

During the keynote Apple VPs like Craig not only mentioned the word China a couple dozen times but they also added quite a number of things that viewers in China might be interested in. Things like mentioning that Siri is integrated with WeChat (which is the primary messaging app in China), randomly sliding in popular location app in China called Dianping, quoting Alipay (the main mobile payment service in China) support with Apple Pay or even mentioning Dim Sum.

I am actually quite curious if the Apple livestream in China has closed captioning to translate the English keynote into Chinese.

Apple is continuing to grow it's presence in China and I guess it won't be long before we see an Apple product launch in China. It is bound to happen sooner or later.

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