During today's Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, Tim Cook stated that the iPhone is available in offers from mobile phone operators that cover only half of the number of mobile phone network subscribers around the globe. The unavailability of the terminal in the network of the largest mobile phone operator in the world, China Mobile, is quite a big problem for Apple, but the company is working on solving the problem and accessing a base of over 700 million users could generate very large revenues for Americans.
I believe on a longer-term basis, all phones will be smartphones. There are a lot more people in the world than the 1.4 billion people who own smartphones already out there. I see this as being one of the best markets of all time. We have enormous momentum. That 500 million iPhones sold was from 2007 to the end of last year. 40% of that happened last year! There's incredible momentum there that in a tiny amount of time we built an ecosystem that is the best user experience on the planet, and a major economic market for developers. We've paid $8 billion to developers.
iPhone is only available to 50% of subscribers in the world. Frankly speaking, I see a wide open field.
