China buys more iPhones than the US for first time in record-setting sales quarter: report

Fresh research from UBS estimates Apple sold 69.3 million iPhones in the last quarter of 2014, setting an all-time record for the company (h/t Techweb and Phonearena). China accounts for more than a third of those shipments.

While holiday sales in the US certainly contributed to that number, UBS says China accounts for up to 35 percent of shipments, outstripping Americans for the first time. During the same period last year, China made up 22 percent of all iPhone sales.

The US share of sales rose from 24 percent to 29 percent year on year.

At the end of the third quarter last year, the iPhone held 18.1 percent of market share in China, a country of 520 million smartphone users. In the US, nearly half of all smartphones sold – 47.3 percent – were iPhones, according to Kantar Worldpanel.

A delayed release for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in China doesn’t seem to have put much of a dent in the devices’ sales figures, which don’t even account for grey market units brought in from Hong Kong and other countries.

See: Tim Cook says Apple will open 25 new stores in China, but that promise has been broken before(Source: Phonearena)