1 Way Apple Inc. (AAPL) Makes Up for Declining Tablet Market Share

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Sales are one thing, but actual usage is another. That’s a point that Apple Inc.  (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been trying to drive home over the past year, citing various statistics on how the iPad’s usage statistics paint an even rosier picture than its already flattering market share sales digits.

At the company’s iPhone 5 event last September, it said that the iPad was grabbing 91% of all tablet web traffic, notably higher than the 68% market share in unit sales it had at the time. The latest figures out of Chitika show that Apple Inc.  (NASDAQ:AAPL) is losing a little bit of ground, although it still has a commanding lead.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)Impressive impressions
The data is built using Chitika’s extensive ad network to determine what type of device is being served up an ad impression, and only covers the U.S. and Canada. The iPad comprises 81% of tablet web traffic in those two countries. The distant second was Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)‘s Kindle Fire with 7.7% of traffic, followed by Samsung at 3.9%. While Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)‘s Nexus 7 is popular among Android enthusiasts, it only grabbed 1.7% of those ad impressions.

This comes shortly after IDC released its unit estimates of the tablet market, showing that the iPad’s share fell to 43.6%. The market researcher estimates that Amazon sold 6 million tablets over the holidays, and chances are the 8.9-inch model wasn’t selling well. Asus, which builds the Nexus 7, shipped a total of 3.1 million tablets, and most of those were undoubtedly Google’s flagship 7-inch tablet.

It’s worth mentioning that these figures don’t show the whole picture since they only cover the U.S. and Canada. Nearly two-thirds of iPads are now sold internationally, and the device’s country availability is far wider than either Amazon or Google. The iPad is sold in 34 countries, compared to Amazon’s six countries and Google’s eight countries.

A rather important country
That includes China, where Apple Inc.  (NASDAQ:AAPL) is seeing incredible growth and where Google is not. The search giant continues to butt heads with the Chinese government over censorship issues, and the government has reportedly blocked the sale of the Nexus 7. That hasn’t stopped buyers completely, as the Nexus 7 can still be found on the gray market, where it sells at premiums.

Amazon has a small e-tail presence in China, but it doesn’t sell the Kindle Fire in the world’s most populous nation. Since the company really has no local content offerings available in China and the Kindle Fire is sold at cost, there’s simply no reason for the company to sell the device there. That may change in the near future, though, as Amazon just recently set up its e-book store in China a couple months ago. Oddly enough, the company directs users to its Kindle apps on iOS or Android since its own hardware is not available.

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