How China Rocks iOS: Usage, Upgrading, and Updating [INFOGRAPHIC]

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A brand-new report by analytics company Umeng reveals a whole bunch of interesting facts and stats about iPhone and iPad usage and adoption in China, and how iOS is taking off across the country.

We all know that China has a huge taste for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) products, so it’s good to have updated figures to match to that. This data was collated up to 2011 Q2 from online usage of around 3,000 domestic iOS apps, which Umeng then analysed by device, location, time, and type of apps being used. I’ve picked out seven of the most interesting pages, and broken them down with a translation-cum-commentary.

iPhone model upgrades – First up, here’s the proportional growth in different iPhone models in China, from the start of this year up to the end of June. Last summer’s new model, the iPhone 4, grew to an eventual 83.4 percent (or 83.8, including the later-issued CDMA variant), showing a strong preference for newer models in the country. The new-for-2009 3GS model is already astonishingly thin on the ground here. I’ll be curious to see if the new iPhone 4S sets the same rate of upgrades by next summer – although that’s perhaps more unlikely given its identical form-factor:

iPad model upgrades – The same analysis of the iPad in China reveals keen adoption of newer models as well, but the later release of the iPad 2 – in March of this year – means that the original Apple slate is still out in force. In total, it looks like the new iPad 2 in all its variants accounts for 59.7 percent of Chinese users, with the original iPad on 40.2:

iOS software updates – With so many people here upgrading their Apple devices annually – and with fairly easy updates in iTunes – it’s not too surprising to see the majority of people using the newest version of the software back in June, which was iOS 4.3. That was only released in March, so it had a swift rise – in just three months – to be on 69.3 percent of iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch models by the summer:

Apple device usage by province – Across China, iOS usage is concentrated around the country’s wealthier southern and eastern coastal provinces. Just five areas – Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong – account for 50.5 percent of usage in this survey. Down at the bottom of the chart is the massive but isolated Tibetan region, which has only 0.1 percent of Chinese iOS users: