Asia Pacific Overtakes Europe as Apple’s Second Largest Revenue Source

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) released its second quarter financial report this morning [1], revealing a 94 percent increase net profit since the same time a year before.

Looking at the overall picture of Apple’s revenue breakdown, you can see that the company’s Asia Pacific revenues surpassed those of Europe for the first time (see chart below). The Asia Pacific region is now Apple’s number-two revenue generator, after the Americas.

Much of the company’s profits in the region were driven by high demand for the iPhone in China, with huge queues and some rowdy behavior when the iPhone 4S went on sale in January. As we have noted many times before, China is pretty crazy about Apple, and in Q2 that amounted to $7.9 billion of revenue. On the earnings call, Apple CEO, Tim Cook noted:

We experienced very strong iPhone sales growth in all of our segments, led by our Asia Pacific and Japan segments where sales more than doubled year-over-year. We continue to see tremendous momentum in Greater China, where iPhone sales were 5x the level of the year ago quarter, aided by the launch of the iPhone 4S in China in January and the addition of China Telecom as an iPhone carrier in March.

But still, all is not completely rosy for the Cupertino company in China. On Tuesday, a Chinese official commented that according to China’s trademark laws, Proview still holds the iPad trademark in that country, while Apple still asserts that it bought those rights back in 2009. According to PC World, the two parties have begun talks to settle the dispute.

[Chart data via Apple press archive]