Tim Cook: China Accounts for 15% of Apple’s Sales, Will Get iPhone 5 in December

In Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) fourth quarter earnings call, CEO Tim Cook pointed out that China is still an “extremely exciting market,” highlighting that the Greater China region [1] accounted for 15 percent of the company’s revenue for the fiscal year. Apple fans in China will be pleased to hear that Cook, when asked about when the iPhone 5 would launch in China, he replied “we project that it will occur in December.”

Cook noted that sales of the iPad were up 45 percent for Greater China, while iPhone sales were up 38 percent. He adds:

[A fantastic Q4] brings us to a full year fiscal year revenue number of 23.8 billion for China which is really phenomenal when you think about it, that’s up over 10 billion year-on-year up 78 percent. […] We are continuing to invest in our own retail stores there, we continue to expand distribution in with channel partners as well.

Apple just opened its third retail store in Beijing and there is reportedly one on the way for Shenzhen.

Looking at the global distribution of Apple’s revenue, we can see that the Asia Pacific region, which includes China, remains just behind Europe ($7.5 billion and $8.0 billion respectively).

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