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iOS World Distribution or English Only Countries

X

xStep

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 28, 2003
2,030
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Less lost in L.A.
When setting up an app for sale, this statement is listed; "Unless you select specific stores, your app will be for sale in all App Stores worldwide.".

My app currently supports english only. What have you in similar situations done or recommend?
 
Why limit your market? If I'm not mistaken, amongst people who know multiple languages and English isn't their first, English is the most common second language to know. Thus limiting yourself to countries that natively speak English is silly.

If people don't know English at all, they probably won't download your app, and if they do, they probably won't keep other people from downloading it.
 
I have some iPhone apps that are English only (UI and description), but actually sell better outside the U.S. (and other countries such as Canada, U.K., Australia that understand American-ese).
 
I wonder where you could get some stats on which languages are most popular and compare that to sales.

Some apps would be pretty easy to offer in other languages, others might be a bit of work.
 
Thanks for the feedback everybody.

I'm going with the World distribution option.

In the future I'd like to do a few language editions, if for no other reason than to learn that side of the setup.

I don't recall seeing any stats or discussions on how to choose what languages to support. Perhaps less experienced developers just wait and see which markets more downloads occur in, while more experienced developers go by their built up history.
 
xStep said:
I don't recall seeing any stats or discussions on how to choose what languages to support. Perhaps less experienced developers just wait and see which markets more downloads occur in, while more experienced developers go by their built up history.
Click to expand...

I would recommend starting with English, Spanish, and French. These three give you all of North America, a lot of Western Europe, and a huge number of sovereign nations these empires have invaded over the past few centuries.
 
xStep said:
I don't recall seeing any stats or discussions on how to choose what languages to support.
Click to expand...

English is currently #1.

Korean, Japanese, and French, are in the next group for language Internationalization, according to reports from one translation service.

With Chinese coming up fast for free apps.

For some reason, Internationalization of an app adding Spanish doesn't pay off as well as its world population percentage would suggest.

I'm selling lots of Non-Internationalized, English-only apps in Sweden and Germany. So those countries don't appear to care that much.
 
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It's apparently difficult for customers to buy an app that's not in their app store. So someone in France who might want to buy an app that's only available in the US app store may not be able to buy it.

I don't see any reason to restrict an app only to English-speaking app stores just because the app is English-only.
 
PhoneyDeveloper said:
It's apparently difficult for customers to buy an app that's not in their app store. So someone in France who might want to buy an app that's only available in the US app store may not be able to buy it.

I don't see any reason to restrict an app only to English-speaking app stores just because the app is English-only.
Click to expand...

+1 I mostly make apps English only, since the people i'm targeting at, should understand at least what "add" etc should mean, you know.
And mostly jsut losely translations don't relate to what you actually want. so i'm a big fan of English only, and it's better, if it was me, offtopic a bit.
The whole world should speak 1 language.. okay, alot of jobs would be lost cuz of translators etc. but it would be
1. Better communication & no communication errors
2. Unite the people more.

And some more reasons i won't bring up
 
jnoxx said:
+1 I mostly make apps English only, since the people i'm targeting at, should understand at least what "add" etc should mean, you know.
And mostly jsut losely translations don't relate to what you actually want. so i'm a big fan of English only, and it's better, if it was me, offtopic a bit.
The whole world should speak 1 language.. okay, alot of jobs would be lost cuz of translators etc. but it would be
1. Better communication & no communication errors
2. Unite the people more.

And some more reasons i won't bring up
Click to expand...

How fluently do you know a second language? Many languages have concepts that can't easily be translated between languages.

Anyways... The only real reason to limit the regions you put an app in are:
Local laws - your app permits users in some areas to get into legal trouble.
Local customs - your app would be incredibly offensive in some areas and you'd get many 1 star reviews from people in that area.
Local relevancy - your app isn't useful to people in an area. IE, US maps aren't useful to people outside of NA... Although maybe you'd still want to offer tourists from EU access. You get the idea.
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
How fluently do you know a second language? Many languages have concepts that can't easily be translated between languages.

Anyways... The only real reason to limit the regions you put an app in are:
Local laws - your app permits users in some areas to get into legal trouble.
Local customs - your app would be incredibly offensive in some areas and you'd get many 1 star reviews from people in that area.
Local relevancy - your app isn't useful to people in an area. IE, US maps aren't useful to people outside of NA... Although maybe you'd still want to offer tourists from EU access. You get the idea.
Click to expand...

Erm, my main language is Dutch (from Belgium), so I also know a piece of French (oui, the language of love!), I also speak English, that's for sure. And lived a while in Germany, so I can speak a bit of German.
Still staying with my original decision. English should be spoken in every country.
Because, I love you, means the same in every language ;) :apple:
 
Oh man, a Eurp who thinks everyone should speak English! English is a very versatile language. English has many more words than the Eurp languages and the grammar is somewhat simpler. Although there are plenty of irregular verbs and irregular plurals etc. due to borrowing from different languages. Spelling is un horror. No one is a good speller in English.

There are a few billion people though who don't speak English. Look at the asians. Their languages are nothing like English so hard for those people to learn.

But Dutch, yeah, I would give up Dutch in favor of English in a minute ;-)
 
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