WWDC 2012: Apple?s Focus on China and What it Means for iOS Developers

Apple?s WWDC Keynote this week was, in the words of Brian Fung over at?The Atlantic, ?All About China.? Apple is putting a lot of resources into making the iOS experience more intuitive for Chinese users. They showed off new character input methods, Chinese-language Siri support, and Baidu?s new home in the Safari search bar, dedicating several minutes of the keynote to China alone.

As of Q4?2011, Android commanded 68% of the Chinese smartphone market over Apple?s 6%. Apple appears to want a bigger piece of the pie. By putting more devices in the hands of Chinese consumers, their moves may help China become an even more important target for iOS developers.While the US is still Chartboost?s biggest source of traffic, China is growing fast. Our interstitials perform well there, too: in May, users in China were?86% more likely to click?an interstitial than their counterparts in the US. This is the case despite the fact that many game developers do not do any language localization in China, either in their games or in their interstitials!Like Apple, we are focusing on growth in China?and we think game developers should, too. If you want to follow in Apple?s footsteps by making your games more accessible to Chinese users, our tools make it easy to localize your campaigns and creatives. We can help: just drop us a line at?support@chartboost.com?and we can walk you through it.