Apple is set to announce its latest earnings today, and analysts are expecting that iPhone sales are going to be bigger in China than the US for the first time, Bloomberg reports.
Analysts from Creative Strategies are predicting Apple sold between 18 and 20 million iPhones in China, compared to between 14 and 15 million iPhones in the US.
This isn't the first time experts have predicted that China will overtake the US on smartphone sales, though. The same expectation surfaced before Apple's previous earnings call. UBS analysts told the Financial Times that China was expected to account for 36% of shipments, versus 24% for the U.S. And another analyst, Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies, told the Financial Times that he expected that 2 million more iPhones would be sold in China than the US.
Apple is scrambling to catch up with the demand for its products in China. The company has been rapidly opening news stores in the country, opening five new stores in five weeks at the start of 2015.
The shift from the US to China isn't going to be a surprise to anyone inside Apple. CEO Tim Cook previously said that it was "just a matter of time" until China becomes Apple's biggest revenue contributor. And CFO Luca Maestri said that demand for Apple products in the country has "been really off the charts."
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