Apple's global rollout of its newest products will continue in China next month — the iPhone 5, fourth-generation iPad, and iPad mini are set to launch in December. The iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad will be available starting Friday, December 7th, while the iPhone 5 will launch a week later on the 14th. It sounds like the intial run of iPads won't have any LTE capabilities, as Apple's release only mentions the Wi-Fi models. While Apple didn't say which carriers would offer the iPhone 5, it's a good bet that both China Unicom and China Telecom will offer the handset.

The launch can't come soon enough for Apple — earlier in the year, it was reported that the company lost a good deal of marketshare as Chinese customers waited for Apple's newest hardware to arrive. Apple CEO Tim Cook has also remarked on the importance of the Chinese market for his company in recent earnings calls; he said in July that Apple sees an enormous growth opportunity in China — no surprise, as the country represents the biggest market in the world.