By Tiernan Ray

Apple's (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook took the podium at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference this afternoon to talk with hardware analyst Bill Shope.

Cook remarked that Apple's revenue from greater Asia, India, Africa and other emerging market territories had expanded from $1.4 billion to $22 billion.

Shope asked Cook what prompted explosive growth in the iPad.

"This 55-million is something no one would have guessed," said Cook, referring to the total shipment volume to date in just under two years.

It took 22 years to sell 55 million Macs, it took us three years to sell that many iPhones. The product is absolutely incredible, and the pace of innovation on the product has been incredible. And the ecosystem. There are 170,000 apps optimized for iPad. But the reason that it's so large in my view is that the iPad has stood on the shoulders of everything that came before it. The App Store was already in play. People were trained on the iPhone, so they were already familiar with multi-touch. It's amazing how the product has captured so many people … You're using one! My mother is using one. I go to the gym and my trainer is using one. It's the fastest adoption across a wide range that I've ever seen before. It quickly became 80% to 90% of my work was done on the iPad. Many of us thought at Apple that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market, and it was just a matter of time before that occurred. I see the incredible rate and pace of innovation among developers. If you invited everyone today to come to this room to discuss the coolest PC apps today, you might not have anyone in the meeting! This is where the innovation is. I love the Mac, and the Mac can still grow, but I strongly believe that the tablet market will surpass the unit sales of the PC market, and it's just a matter of the rate and speed with which that happens. It's too much of a change for it not to.

Asked about pricing as a factor, Cook responded that tablets might sell units on price, but that the experience upon taking the product home would be despair. You feel good taking your wallet out to pay for it. But when you get it home and you use it, you don't remember, Oh! I got a good deal! Because you hate it.

Amazon.com (AMZN), said Cook, is a "different kind of competitor."

I think they'll sell a lot of units. I think they have and they will, but I think the customers we're designing for are not going to be satisfied with a limited-function product. I think the catalyst in the tablet market will be innovation, and going to the next frontier. As long as people invent their own stuff, I love competition.

Cook said iPad has cannibalized some Mac sales. "I don't predict the demise of the PC industry. I don't subscribe to that. I do believe it's cannibalizing more Windows PCs, there's many more of them to cannibalize. I think tablets in general will cannibalize PCs."

"Maybe, i think politicians do this, it forces you to sharpen your message and say who you are. It will be good for the PC market because it will force them to innovate. Out of that I think there will be a strong PC industry. I just think in units the tablet market will be larger than the PC market.

Shope asked Cook why the company is using its cash "sparingly."

Cook took exception to that phrasing.

We've spent billions on acquisitions, including the acquisition of IP. We've spent billions on retail. We've spent billions on infrastructure for the App Store and such. But, yes, we still have a lot. I guess I would say we've been judicious. We spend money like it's our last penny. I think shareholders want us to do that. I don't think they want us to act like our rich. And we've never felt that way.

"I'm not religious about holding it. We're in very active discussions at the board level about what to do. We're not going to go have a toga party and do something outlandish. People don't have to worry it's going to burn a hole in our pocket."

When shop asked Cook if the cash balance was "inefficient," he conceded Apple has more cash than needed to run the business. "I only ask for a little patience."

Shope asked about the AppleTV product and what Cook's intentions are for the product and the market, and why it is still a "hobby."

We don't want to send a message to you and our other shareholders that we think it is as big as our other markets. We don't want to send a signal we think the leg of that stool is of equal length as the other [product categories at Apple.]

Although Apple has sold 3 million units of the product, and Cook notes satisfaction is "off the charts," he said the company has thought it would need something "more main market" to have the product be at a larger volume.

When Shope asked Cook about iCloud and Siri, Cook said iCloud followed the "media hub" idea of the last decade for the Mac, but "iCloud turns that on its head."

You and I live off of multiple devices. It's no longer a great customer experience to have to sync your iPad to your Mac, and then sync to your iPhone, and then resync your iPad because there's something you forgot. All of a sudden your life has gotten so much easier. We now have 100 million users of iCloud. There's obviously more we can do with it. For years, you used a physical keyboard and you used a mouse for input. You did that for a long, long time. There wasn't a great deal of revolution. All of a sudden Apple comes out with multi-touch on the Mac Pros. Then extended that in phones and tablets. Well, Siri is another profound change in input. It's something we've always dreamed of. It's sort of like having a video call with FaceTime. Ah ha! It can work. These are not things where we run separate P&Ls because we don't believe in that. We've always run just one P&L and don't worry about it. We just want people to have a great experience. But I think these are things you will look back on and talk with your grandkids about that are profound.

When Shope asked Cook what his role as CEO is about, Cook reflected on Apple's culture, which he said he did not want to change,

Steve drilled in all of us over many years that the company should revolve around great products. We should stay extremely focused on a few things rather than that we do so many that we don't do them well. And we should only go into markets where we can do good for society, not just sell a lot of products. These are the things that I focus on. We're always focused on the future. We don't sit and think about how great things were yesterday. Those are the things I'm holding onto. It's a privilege to be a part of it.