Apple hooks up exploding Mac userbase in China with local services in OS X Mountain Lion

9to5 Staff | Feb 16 2012 - 8:10 am PT

Mountain Lion will cater to Chinese users more than any other OS X version. CEO Tim Cook once more underscored the importance of China by highlighting Mac sales in today’s interview with the Wall Street Journal. Sales doubled in the 1.33 billion-people market during 2011 to the tune of $13 billion in revenue.

“They know about Apple and what Apple stands for. Then they search out and look for the Mac”, he told the paper. Apple’s promotional material said Mountain Lion makes it easy to “set up Mail, Contacts, Calendar, video sharing, web searching, and blogging on your Mac using many popular services in China.”

For starters, Chinese input method in Mountain Lion has “significant enhancements.” Secondly, Apple worked hard to make sure customers in China get a localized experience by providing the ability to select Baidu search in Safari. Baidu is the dominant search engine in China, ranked No. 6 in Alexa’s global rankings and No. 1 in China with an estimated 56.6-percent share of the country’s 4.02 billion search queries as of June 2011…

Mountain Lion supports local email service providers QQ, 126 and 163 in Contacts, Mail and Calendar apps out of the box. Moreover, when Chinese users share content from within Apple’s apps and third-party apps using the new Share Sheets feature, they will be presented with local services, such as video sharing websites Youku and Tudou. Another interesting tidbit is system-wide support for the Sina weibo micro-blogging platform. Apple explained all these new features for Chinese users at its sneak peek page and in the official press release. Per description on the company’s website:

It’s a new Mac experience in China. OS X Mountain Lion brings all-new support for many popular Chinese services. And they’re easy to set up. Mail, Contacts, and Calendar work with QQ, 163, and 126. Baidu, the leading Chinese search provider, is a built-in option in Safari. The video-sharing websites Youku and Tudou are included in the new Share Sheets, so users in China can easily post videos to the web. They can also blog with Sina weibo, the popular microblogging service. And with improved text input, typing in Chinese is easier, faster, and more accurate.