The Chinese market is readjusting after the end of the Windows XP support life, and they do not seem to be very interested in another Windows operating system, so they are looking for alternatives. That is why Ubuntu Kylin is having an unforeseen impact in the Chinese market, and Dell is one of the means used to expand the system in China.
Let's not be fooled: Windows is still a major player within the Asian Giant market, but it is not the same situation that existed a decade ago. The computing ecosystem is much more varied, and we find that there are a good number of very successful Linux distributions present in it. Deepin is one of them, but Ubuntu Kylin is the one that is officially supported by the Chinese authorities, which carries a lot more weight than you would expect.
As you can imagine, the private sector wants a piece of this whole pie, and Dell is one of the companies that figured out how to get a foot out the door: Distributing desktops and laptops with Ubuntu Kylin pre-installed instead of Windows.
The Chinese love Linux, and Dell too
Dell has been shipping Ubuntu-powered PCs for a season now, and the company is making sure consumers know. They cannot send any Ubuntu to China, but luckily for them there is Ubuntu Kylin for the Asian giant since 2013.
I agree with you country media, 40% of Dell laptops sold in China incorporate Ubuntu Kylin, and that translates into a huge number of machines. It may not be very impressive in the West - they are still lagging behind Windows after all, it doesn't seem like anything remarkable - but China is a country where billions of people live, and 40% of all those potential users is quite a lot.
Ubuntu Kylin is part of the Ubuntu family and follows the same release cycle: Every six months a new version appears, the latest being Ubuntu Kylin 15.04. The 15.10 version of the system is expected for next October.
I think there is an error, because it is not Ubuntu kylin but NeoKylin