Apple marching east - China becomes the company's second largest market

Apple CEO Tim Cook has more than once referred to China as one of the company's key markets. He spent years in talks with China Mobile, trying to solidify a deal that would have the operator support and sell iPhones. Apple had a small presence in China before, through carriers China Unicom and China Telecom, but seeing as China Mobile is considered the largest mobile provider in the world, one could easily guess why Apple was so interested in being in business with it.

So, it looks like all the strides have paid off – from the record sales of iPhone 5s and 5c early last year, to the crazydemand for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus units in the past few months, China has easily surpassed Europe to become Cupertino's second largest market. According to the second quarter report that came out of the fruity company earlier, the company scored a revenue of $58 billion, of which $16.2 billion was made in China alone – that's a little more than a third – marking a 71% year-over-year increase for the region. In comparison, Europe's part in reaching the aforementioned revenue is $12.2 billion.