What Chinese Apple Market Looks Like

On Jan 27th Apple announced that the company's performance in China was “impressive”

The company saw a rise in revenue of 70 percent. It was also reported that sales of

Apple products had doubled year-over-year in China. Luca Maestri (CFO Apple) named

China as second largest iPhone market. However, Apple still needs to compete with

Samsung and the new upstart Xiaomi for the dominant position in Chinese smartphone

market. In this circumstance, an accurate insight of what Chinese Apple market looks like

would be a key takeaway for Apple and for all iOS APP developers.

The release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in September, at the beginning

of the holiday quarter, was a large driving factor in the high sales levels.

Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which finally gave Chinese consumers what they love: large-

screen smartphones, became super popular shortly after the release. As relatively few

Chinese consumers own either a home computer or have home Wifi access, many

Chinese consumers use their phones as their primary, and sometimes only Internet-

connected device, so big screen sizes are a huge draw.

The number of the active users of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus grew by 63.5 times 3

months after the release. Due to factors like price difference and insufficient supply,

iPhone 6 had larger market share than iPhone 6 Plus. Nevertheless, iPhone 6 Plus is

quickly catching up. The ratio of iPhone 6 Plus active devices to iPhone 6 active devices

rose from 1:3 in October to 1:1.6 in December.

Active iPhone devices count for 83.83% active Apple devices in China

As was mentioned above relativly few people have home Wifi access in China. It is

therefore not surprising that iPhone devices are a lot more popular than iPad devices in

China. Until Dec. 2014, active iPhone devices counted for 83.83% active Apple devices in

China, while iPad devices counted for only for 16.17%.

Below is a list of the 10 most popular Apple devices in China. As we can see, iPhone 6

and iPhone 6 Plus already account for 13.3% of all active Apple devices only 4

months after released. iPhone 5s and iPad Air are the most widely used iOS devices

regarding iPhone and iPad category.

This rapid growth of the number of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices implied

one key character of Chinese Apple consumers, which is always to pursue the

fashion.

Chinese consumers usually flock to snap up the newly released devices. Another data

that Umeng collected could also reveal the same conclusion, which would be as followed:

Shortly 4 months after released, iOS 8.1 operating system became the most widely used

iOS operating system in China. A rose of 39.24% in Active users was observed in

Dec.2014. At the same time, the Android’s newest operating system 4.2 only showed a

growth of 8.96% four months after released.

Apple remains a very popular brand in China, especially regarding iPhone products. We

have reasons to anticipate that Chinese consumers will continue to be huge fans of the

future iPhone products. According to the trend observed, China may become the largest

iPhone market in 1 year.

You can also download the report and read related reports on：

Umeng website: http://www.umeng.com/umengdata_reports

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/umengnews/umeng-report-what-chinese-apple-market-looks-like

About Umeng : Umeng is the leading professional platform for mobile App developers

in China, and is highly competitive throughout the industry in regarding to data attraction.

It was founded in April 2010 in Beijing. Umeng’s production chain starts with Umeng

Analytics, and now has grown into an integrated service (from development to operation)

platform. Umeng’s mission is to provide mobile developers with professional services as

statistics, operations components, mobile App index reference, and marketing, etc. A

“one-stop” solution was launched in October 2013, which includes productions as Umeng

Analytics, Umeng Share, Umeng Push, Umeng User Feedback, Umeng Crash Report, etc.

Umeng provides services that adapt to multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, and

Windows Phone. Currently, most of the mainstream mobile developers are Umeng’s

clients. As of December 2014, Over 420,000 Apps and 140,000 developers have

benefited from Umeng's services.