Apple's Cook on iPad, Asia, Apple TV, and more

20.07.2011

[For the iPhone,] we did add 42 new carriers and 15 new countries during the quarter. So we continued our expansion efforts... However, those occurred throughout the quarter. The real sequential improvement, frankly, was due to emerging and developed markets. China was a big part of it, Latin America (driven by Brazil and Mexico) was a big part of it, and the Middle East was a big part of it. Which I think is great for Apple, because these are markets that Apple historically has not been as strong in. And we're really beginning to see the fruits of our labor in these markets.

Prepaid or unlocked phones--said more in English, phones sold without a contract--are very key in China and a number of the emerging markets, where the credit systems are not as well established as they are in the U.S., Japan, western Europe, Australia, et cetera. You can look at our volume, the iPhone volume for the first three quarters of fiscal year was up 5 times year-over-year. And iPhone is the key contributor to greater China having a cumulative revenue of around $8.8 billion for the first three quarters. And so I'm not saying at all that we have figure out precisely how to play perfectly in the environment--we haven't. I think we have more to do and more to learn, but I feel very, very good about our progress.

If any of us would have been told a year ago that we would do $3.8 billion in greater China in a quarter, I don't think very many of us would have believed it, and I don't think any of you would've believe it. And so we feel very, very good about it and we're taking those learnings and applying those to other markets as well.

We have a very simple view here. And that view is, we love competition, we think it's great for us and for everyone, but we want people to invent their own stuff. And we're going to make sure that we defend our portfolio appropriately.