Apple has creatively taken into consideration the tastes of its Chinese consumers particularly in choosing Apple's product color designs, according to CEO Tim Cook in a recent Bloomberg Businessweek Chinese-version interview on June 17.
Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, has been a growing market among tech companies, including Apple and its biggest rivals Samsung and Xiaomi. It is currently the second-largest market for Apple, aside from the U.S. and accounts for 29 percent of the company's revenue for the first quarter of this year, according to data recorded by Bloomberg.
Cook said Apple has initially highlighted the importance of the Chinese market to the company when it began offering gold variants of the iPhone 5s. Of course, the bump in the screen size of Apple's flagship phones, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, is also a large factor that contributes to the increased popularity of Apple's phones in the Chinese smartphone market.
Apple has also built its largest store in the world in China, on the eastern city of Hangzhou. Cook said he noticd the Apple Watch made a promising start when he visited the store during his week-long visit to the Far East in May. Aside from the increasing sales, developers are also working on more than 3,500 apps for the wearable gadget, which is much more than the 500 apps available in the App Store for the 2008 model of the iPhone and the 1,000 apps for the iPad debut in 2010.
Apple has not yet revealed the numbers for the initial sales for the Apple Watch, the first new product of the company since the death of its co-founder Steve Jobs. The Appple Watch has also served as a key test to Cook's ability to develop innovative products for the company.
Cook ended the interview speaking about plans to implement trial learning programs in 180 different schools in China that aim to "transform traditional educational models and help students contribute to society." Some of these programs include using smartphones to help teach hearing-impaired students and teaching children to compose music with Apple's GarageBand app. Cook hopes to expand the number of programs by almost 50 percent before the year ends.
Photo: Kārlis Dambrāns | Flickr
