14 DAY TRIAL // Soon after announcing that iPhone developer news had become available via RSS, Apple issued a new announcement saying that additional language support had been added to iTunes Connect, the service providing access to tools and resources for the distribution of iPhone and iPod touch applications through the App Store. These include application delivery, application-management tools, sales information, banking setup, and financial reporting.
“With over 50 million users of iPhone and iPod touch in 81 countries around the world, it's more important than ever to make your app available in a user's language of choice,” Apple tells developers on the iPhone Dev Center. “You can, and should, create localized versions of your app for each market you sell to,” Apple’s advice goes. “In iTunes Connect, you can customize your app's metadata, keywords and screenshots for each localized version.”
The Mac maker reveals that it has been busy expanding the list of languages available for localizing an app metadata. As a result, the company ended up adding the following languages (listed along with the matching App Store territory), the report reveals.
Brazilian Portuguese: Brazil App Store; Korean: Korea App Store; Portuguese: Portugal App Store; Russian: Russia App Store; Simplified Chinese: China App Store; Swedish: Sweden App Store.
“If you have localized your apps, be sure to update the metadata language information for each of your localized versions whenever you update an app,” Apple continues to outline, and proceeds with offering some instructions on how to do that. “In iTunes Connect, select Edit Application and click on the Localization tab; select the language from the pull-down menu,” the text reads.
For quite a while now, Apple has been struggling to maintain a good relationship with developers, while eliminating the clutter generated by useless apps. These are only the first real steps in the direction Apple’s App Store was originally headed.