A recent survey , conducted in China and composed of mobile phone users, has revealed a number of interesting figures and opinions in regards to who is buying mobile apps, user preferences for iOS and Android (News - Alert) and user tolerance for in-app advertisements. The new case study, conducted by mobile advertising management platform, Guohe, is entitled: Mobile Advertising: Six Key Trends in 2012 — How marketers can best utilize mobile advertising as part of an integrated digital strategy in China.

The study was composed of 600 mobile phone users, using phones from a number of manufacturers, including Apple, HTC (News - Alert), Samsung, Motorola (News - Alert), Sony, Ericsson and more. Apparently, 54 percent of those interviewed had Android devices and about 39 percent had a jailbroken or rooted phone.

The survey revealed that users tend to be more accepting of ads in news apps and least tolerant of ads in apps that deal with photography and graphics as well as location and map apps. Gaming is a very popular app category among both iOS and Android users, while game apps work well for advertising as the study found that apps of this type have a significantly higher click-through rate than other categories.

Since they tend to be more expensive, iPhone (News - Alert) were typically found in the hands of city folk, entrepreneurs, and businesspeople as well as more fashion-conscious users, while these types of people also tend to gravitate toward game, utility and shopping apps. Users of the open source Android OS, on the other hand, tend to favor reading apps.

The study also found that a higher percentage of China’s iPhone users spend more money on apps than Android users, only 23 percent of actually purchase apps. This may have to do with the easy access Chinese Android users have to over 100 different third party app stores which often offer paid apps for free.

Meanwhile, 25 percent of iPhone users apparently prefer paying for apps in order to have them ad free while only 13 percent of Android users said the same thing. This has a lot to do with the fact that one of the major draws of the Android platform is the higher percentage of free apps as compared to iOS. Another factor here is the fact that manufacturers like HTC often include their own app stores on their mobile devices.

The complete report can be downloaded in pdf format here.