X

Amazon Kindle Fire gains Web usage market share on iPad loss

Apple's tablet overwhelmingly dominates the market, but loses more than 7 percent to Amazon, according to new research.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
Expertise I have more than 30 years' experience in journalism in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
Steven Musil
2 min read

Web usage of Apple's iPad fell more than 7 percent in North America after Christmas, while competing tablets from Amazon, Google, and Samsung all registered gains, according to a new study released today.

While the iPad dominates the market with 78.8 percent Web usage, its usage after Christmas dropped 7.14 percent, according to Chitika Insights, which sampled hundreds of millions of smartphone and tablet ad impressions in the U.S. and Canada between December 1 and December 27. The Kindle Fire -- the distant second-place player in the market -- gained 3 percent to account for 7.51 of all impressions during the period.

Samsung's Galaxy Tablet came in third with a gain of 1.38 percent for a market share of 4.39 percent, followed by the Google Nexus, which gained 0.92 percent to finish with a 2.04 percent share. Microsoft's Surface recorded a rather miniscule 0.17 percent increase for a 0.4 percent share. But the Surface still fared better than the BlackBerry PlayBook, which lost 0.02 percent for a 0.68 share.

"This substantial change underscores the inroads non-iPad tablets made this holiday season, reflecting some initial holiday sales estimates released by companies like Amazon. Their Kindle Fire HD tablet was the top-selling product on Amazon.com on Black Friday," Chitika said in a statement. "However, despite the gains by competitors, we expect that the iPad's share of tablet traffic will return to the 80 percent range, albeit lower than pre-holiday levels, as users return from vacation and browse with their new devices less frequently."

Meanwhile, Apple's iPhone 5 recorded the largest increase in Web impressions, jumping 1.11 percent to finish with a 8.27 share, followed by Samsung Galaxy S3's 1 percent rise (4.29 percent) and a 0.17 percent gain that gave the Samsung Galaxy Note 1 and 2 a 1.02 percent increase.