6 months ago Reuters reported on Apple’s growing popularity in China as Apple products were selling out left and right. Now Tim Cook announces that China is now Apple’s greatest hope.
Apple’s quarterly earnings report is scheduled to be released only a couple of weeks from now. That use to be a good thing for Apple, quite a while back now, but three of the last five of Apple’ earnings reports haven’t nearly reached investor expectations and since September, Apple shares are down nearly 25%. In a nutshell, Apple really can’t afford to fall too short of expectations during this coming report. Not only because of their dismal past reports, but also because this report will reflect the most consumer oriented holiday season. In essence, it will in various ways somewhat show how much people either love Apple, or are leaving it behind.
Timing is obviously a must in technology today as companies both new and old release products by the minute. Luckily for Apple, over the years they’ve done a fairly good job of staying right on time with the curve by releasing fairly innovative products at particular intervals. The innovation has seemed to slow though as the market became saturated with smart-phones and tablets, with even Apple putting out iPad after iPad in short time spans.
Apple still sees an opportunity for future growth though. Not only with its existing products, but future innovations as well. The odd part is that Tim Cook foresees a country other than America bringing in the lions share of Apple’s revenue in the future, and Apple is getting ready to now capitalize on that opportunity.
This is the first time ever that an Apple exec (especially the CEO), has expressly said, “I believe it will become our first,” as reported by the Chinese government operated Xinhua News.
In other words, Apple CEO Tim Cook believes that China will surpass America and become Apple’s largest market. With the number of people in China, this is of course a plausible guess.
Tim Cook didn’t express when either this hope or prediction of his would come to fruition, but China brought in almost $6 billion in sales for Apple last quarter. America brought in about 14 ½ billion.