How many Apple users are in China?
Greater China.
As previously reported, China represented 18% of net sales for Apple in the fourth quarter of 2025. This was up from 15% the year before and the third largest reporting segment. The segment grew by 37.9% year-on-year.
It’s time to understand precisely how big this market is in terms of users, iPhone install base and device install base, with an eye toward understanding the history and potential for growth.
First, it’s important to note that Apple refers to “Greater China” (GC) not just China. That means within this reporting segment are Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. The populations are approximately, 1.4 billion, 23.2 million, 7.5 million and 700k respectively.
Second, the population of smartphone users has been growing dramatically. In 2016 there were about 690 million (GC) and in 2025 the number is about 997 million. The forecast for 2029 is 1.08 billion.
Third, the share of iOS has been rising but at different rates in the three regions (Macao is excluded because of small relative size, but Apple is holding iOS share steady at about 60%.)



These graphs represent the trends in Mobile OS share as collected by Statcounter and trendlines for iOS are shown with projections to 2029.
Multiplying the share numbers by the user numbers, including projections gives the following iOS users summary.
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