Apple Inc staged a low-key launch of its latest iPad in Beijing on Friday, free of the chaotic scenes that plagued the tech giant's previous product debuts in its most promising growth market.

The calm, orderly queues came as a surprise to many Apple fans in China, who are used to standing overnight in snaking queues with scalpers to get their hands on the latest product.

Apple cleared a potential legal hurdle to the release when it settled a dispute with a Chinese company, Proview Technologies, over ownership of the iPad name.

Apple settled the case by paying 60 million US dollars to Proview earlier in July.

With over 1.4 billion people, China is Apple's second-largest market after the United States and the source of much of the California-based company's sales growth.