When asked to comment on potential iPad rivals, Cook laid into the competition, calling current tablets running Android "bizarre products in our view" because their version of the operating system wasn't designed for tablets.

Of the Android tablets that many manufacturers strutted at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, Cook was slightly kinder. "There's nothing shipping yet, so I don't know [how they'll do against the iPad]," he said. "But it's hard for me to understand that in a side-by-side comparison, that an enormous amount of people won't select an iPad."

Cook also described tablets running Windows as "big and heavy and expensive" that "customers are not interesting in."

Even when credible tablets make it to market, Cook continued, he argued that Apple has a "huge" advantage because of its early entry into the space.

"I think they got Windows tablets correct," Marshall said. "But they were a little dismissive of Android as vapor because we'll see them shortly."