Digital textbooks that offer multimedia features, interactive controls, e-annotation and learning process tracking are gaining increasing attention in today's mobile learning era, particularly with the rapid development of mobile learning terminals such as Apple's iPad series and Android-based models. Accordingly, this study explores how elementary school students use digital textbooks via mobile learning terminals such as the iPad by mainly assessing relevant data resources. The participants of this study included 6211 students from 74 elementary schools in China. Several themes, such as demographic characteristics, self-efficacy, technology acceptance model, learning process, behavior attention and attitude with regard to their usage of digital textbooks, were analyzed. The data of this study would aid policy makers and educators in conducting further research on the implementation of the K-12 educational technology reform with digital textbooks via mobile learning terminals in formal school settings.