While much of the talk about the iPhone’s success had centered on the U.S. and Europe, it appears Apple’s entry into China has been a little-discussed but important reason why the Cupertino, Calif. company Tuesday blew the doors off analyst expectations.
Analysts were off by up to 30 percent, expecting Apple to announce almost 2 million fewer iPhone sales than the 8.7 million the consumer electronics leader actually reported. The reason for that gap could be China.
Apple earned $1.3 billion from iPhone sales in China for the first half of fiscal 2009 – a 200 percent increase over the previous year, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told Barclay analyst Ben Reitzes during a conference call on the company’s second-quarter earnings.
“The revenue, we have never released this number before but I will do this in this particular case, through the first half of the fiscal year that we just completed for the six month period our revenue from greater China was almost $1.3 billion and this is up over 200 percent year-over-year,” Cook told the analyst.
Apple added 800 more distribution points in China and saw iPhone sales increase 9-fold, according to the company’s executive. Given those numbers, Apple may have sold around 2.1 million iPhones in China.
With a potential market of 50 million cell phone owners, 2.1 million may sound like a drop in the bucket. However, given that 2.1 million is four percent of the market, Apple may have made impressive gains in a market introduction previously viewed as a failure.
[via Fortune]
