Why Do We Need Jailbreak for iOS in China?

Jailbreaking the iOS device is NOT a good thing to do. I know that, and every time when I speak about the Chinese mobile internet market I always mention this issue. Jailbreak for Chinese iOS users basically means they are able to download most of the popular apps/games on so-called third-party iOS App Store such as PP Assistant, 91 Assistant etc, for free. According to the latest research from UMeng, even it says that by end of September 2012, the percentage of iOS devices got jailbroken has drop to 42.4% from 51% of 2011, it is still kinda embarassing.

So when the long-waiting iOS 6.1 jailbreak tool is released today, Chinese iPhone/iPad fans just love it!!

But seriously, it’s not just about the free-download of the pirate apps. in China, we do need Jailbreaking, for two reasons:

1. Connection with Apple’s App Store is stupidly slow. It may take 15min to get an app like FlipBoard, Facebook downloaded. For those apps with size over 100m? Forget it…and I wanted to subscribe some magazine on Newstand, but it just takes ages to download one issue.

2. the default Chinese input method is difficult to use. I just hate to use iOS’s default input method for Chinese. Switching between Chinese and English is so user un-friendly, the number of Chinese vocabulary is also very limited. We so miss Sogou Input, Baidu Input or TouchPal Input method. With them, I can type at least 2 times faster.

Seriously, Apple please listen to this, if you are pissed off by the Jailbreaking issue in China and want to boost the iOS revenue from China, gets those issues fixed first.