After lining up outside for 16 hours, Yu Hong stepped out of an Apple store in Beijing one happy lady on Friday.

"I love the iPad 2!" she shouted.

The 48-year-old was the first to buy Apple's iPad 2 at its Sanlitun store, the company's flagship store in the city.

"I finally have what I've dreamed of having!" she said, surrounded by media.

iPad 2 fans wait in front of the Apple Store in the Sanlitun area of Beijing on Friday.

Around her, more than 800 people were still lined up outside the store as the updated version of the popular tablet computer went on sale in the world's biggest Internet market on Friday.

In the first quarter of this year, revenue from greater China accounted for 10 percent of Apple's total revenue. That number was less than 2 percent a couple of years ago, according to Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer.

There are only four stores in the country at present, serving a population of 1.3 billion, compared with 236 Apple stores in the United States.

"Apple's Beijing Apple store has outsold the Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan," Cook said.

During the past few quarters, Apple has accelerated the introduction of its latest products to China. The WiFi-embedded version of the iPad 2 was available in China on Friday, only two months after its release in the US. In the past, Apple products would be released in China up to nine months after hitting the US market.