Unlike Android devices that can be customized fairly extensively without having to root or flash custom ROMs, iPhones on the other hand need to be jailbroken if the user wants to apply some tweaks and customizations or gain access to apps that might not be available from the iTunes App Store. At the same time jailbreaking iOS devices also provides access to pirated apps which we guess could be seen as an incentive for some to jailbreak. However in a recent report, it has been interestingly noted that the number of jailbroken devices in China is on the decline.
According to Umeng, they are reporting that about 42% of all iOS devices in China are jailbroken, and this is a drop from the 51% that was reported in Q2 2011. So why the decline? Considering that copyright laws in China aren’t exactly enforced strictly, should we be seeing an increase in jailbroken iPhones? Well it seems that the decline is thanks to Apple allowing the use of local bank cards to purchase items via iTunes, and since there is now a legal and less troublesome way to go about purchasing your apps, it was suggested that this has contributed to the decline. On the flipside the iPhone 5 has yet to achieve an untethered jailbreak which could also contribute to the decline, but what do you guys think?