Apple revealed on its fiscal Q3 2013 earnings conference call on Tuesday that the number of registered iOS developers in China has grown by 70% over the past year. The 500,000 developers that call the Asian country home amounts to almost twice as many as the 275,000 registered developers that reside in the United States.
While Apple has been on a tear in China in recent years, the company’s revenue in the region during the June quarter was down a surprising 43 percent sequentially and 14 percent year-over-year. Apple CEO Tim Cook noted on the call that Hong Kong had contributed to the drag, as sell-through in mainland China was up 5 percent year-over-year after accounting for inventory changes. He also said the current state of China’s economy has posed difficulties for Apple and its competitors.
Cook did note that the Q3 revenue of $4.6 billion was still a strong showing when compared to just a few years ago, when that number was in “just” the hundreds of millions.
