Tim Cook: China will be Apple's biggest market

Throughout the history of Apple, the United States has been the company's largest market. That's set to change -- while on his trip to China, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he believes that China will become the largest market for the company's products.

Speaking to the state-run Xinhua News, Cook said that "China is currently our second-largest market. I believe it will become our first. I believe strongly that it will. We are growing very fast. We are continuing to invest in retail stores here and will open many more over the next several years. We have some great sites selected, our manufacturing base is here, and we have incredible partners here. So it's a very, very important country to us."

At present, the greater China region accounts for about 15 percent of Apple's total revenue and that number is rising quickly. China is the largest market in the world for activations of smartphones and will soon have more smartphone owners than any other country. Unfortunately, most of those are currently inexpensive Android devices, so Apple has challenges to overcome in the market.