Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) settled a trademark suit in China. This should open the way for more iPad sales in the world’s most populous nation. Proview International Holdings made claims about the iPad name, which Apple vigorously contested. But the amount of settlement — $60 million — shows that the legal battle may have been a nuisance from a financial standpoint. That is not so from a revenue one. Apple is in a race to get the kind of market leadership position in China that it has throughout much of the rest of the world.
Rivals, particularly Samsung, have begun to do well in the People’s Republic. The size of the Internet-enabled population in China, which is dominated by wireless, is thought to be more than 700 million. Apple needs a large portion of the market to keep up the pace of its feverlike sales growth.
Douglas A. McIntyre