(Yicai) Nov. 3 -- Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook was sanguine about the Chinese market during the US tech giant’s earnings call yesterday after it sold a record number of iPhones in China and despite quarterly revenue from the country falling 2 percent.

“Over the long term, I view China as an incredibly important market, and I’m very optimistic about it,” said Cook, who has visited the country twice this year.

“In the September quarter we set an iPhone revenue record in China. We’re very proud of that,” he said. “The market predictions that I’ve seen had the market contracting, and so, if those are correct, then we gained share last quarter.”

In the three months ended Sept. 30, revenue from China fell 2 percent from a year earlier, California-based Apple’s latest financial report showed yesterday.

Cook attributed the decline to fluctuations in the foreign exchange rate: “One thing to keep in mind here is that the FX impact was nearly six points. So we grew in constant currency.” Another factor was less impressive sales of Mac computers and iPads.

Despite record iPhone sales, new handset releases are causing less hype in China as sales of the iPhone 15, the latest model, were 4.5 percent lower in the first 17 days after launch than sales of the iPhone 14 right after it hit stores in September 2022, according to market research firm Counterpoint.

To boost market performance, Cook made his second visit to China last month. In just four days, he visited Beijing, the two cities of Chengdu and Ya'an in Sichuan province, and made a pit stop at Jiashan to check out a plant of Luxshare Precision Industry, the sole assembler of Apple’s forthcoming Vision Pro mixed-reality headset.

Apple’s global net profit rose 11 percent USD23 billion, while revenue dipped 1 percent to USD89.5 billion, the earnings report showed.

Editor: Emmi Laine