Apple’s China sales revenue soared 71 per cent to US$16.8 billion in the first three months of this year, putting Greater China ahead of Europe as the tech giant’s second largest market.

It was the main driver of a sharp 33 per cent increase year-on-year in quarterly Apple profit – to a massive US$13.6 billion.

In product terms, much of the growth came from the iPhone of which the company sold 61 million during the quarter – or roughly 678,000 phones every day. iPhone sales rose 40 per cent year-on-year.

Apple’s total sales revenue increased 27 per cent to US$58.01 billion.

CEO Tim Cook says the company was thrilled by the continued strength of the iPhone, Mac and App store especially.

“We’re seeing a higher rate of people switching to iPhone than we’ve experienced in previous cycles, and we’re off to an exciting start to the June quarter with the launch of Apple Watch.”

The massive profit has boosted Apple’s cash reserves to more than US$193 billion, prompting a ramping up of the share buy-back program and a 50 cent per share dividend to shareholders.

The key to Apple’s improvement was the launch of the larger screen model which has helped lure sales back from Samsung and other brands.

The only blemish, if you could call it one, was a 23 per cent drop in sales of the iPad to 12.6 million units, with revenues down 29 per cent.