Could Apple outgrow China? Some executives and investors talk as if, as a market, China were inexhaustible. If you could cut through the red tape and get the distribution, you could sell as many cars, pills, insurance policies, widgets or sprockets as you could churn out. So suggesting that any company could be too big for China sounds a bit like John Lennon’s 1966 assertion that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

Apple has not saturated China yet, obviously: Its Chinese sales grew 55 per cent in the quarter reported yesterday, to $16bn. A big number, but it comes to something on the order of 20m iPhones. That’s only one iPhone for every 60 people (come on, guys!). That Apple had $31bn in sales in the US is suggestive of how big China can be.

It is not, however, as if everyone else in China is waiting in a very long line at the Apple Store in Beijing. Barclays estimates that half the population has a smartphone, and that 390m smartphones were sold in China last year. GDP per capita is about $7,000 (an average iPhone 6 is a shade under $700). Apple is not going to have the penetration in China it has in the US anytime soon.