Forest Liu, a Mac user and advocate in the less-than-Apple-friendly country of China, thinks that Mac OS X could help increase the Macintosh platform’s popularity there.
Liu, who was spotlighted by MacCentral back in November 1999, has been getting ever more involved with the Mac industry in China over the last month. He spoke on Mac OS X at an Apple road show and has talked to Chinese resellers all over the country. Plus, he works part-time for one of Apple’s distributors (Founder) that’s looking into bringing software from the United States and other countries to China.
“You have to understand that China is a tiny market for Apple products right now, but I hope to help grow it over the next year,” Liu told MacCentral.
He realizes that Mac users and advocates in other countries are probably also in similar situations. And Liu hopes that Apple will understand that “the world isn’t just the United States.” He said that Apple needs to be a “truly global business” and Mac OS X could help this happen.
“Mac OS X brings with it a huge improvement,” Liu said. “Locialization can be done in no time compared to Mac OS 9. And it’s finally (almost) a truly global operating system.”
Though China won’t be bringing Apple huge amounts of cash in the short term because of the proliferation of software piracy, this could change in the days ahead, he added.
“Founder will take over all responsibilities after receiving the license to distribute the software China-wide,” Liu said. “They’ll localize the software, translate the manual, print, press and box everything. Actually to the developer it’ll be a tiny boost instead of no money at all and their software will have a foot in the door in China.”
Look for our upcoming report on Macs in China and the country’s personal computer situation.