Mobile ad firm Chitika loves to survey Web traffic on various mobile devices, and its regular survey of ad impressions originating from certain devices came out for the dates of December 1 through December 27. The survey noted some interesting trends once Christmas passed.
Post-Christmas, all iPad models (including the iPad Mini, which was introduced as a direct competitor to the Kindle Fire) lost more than seven percentage points in market share, from 86 percent down to 78.9 percent (an overall drop of eight percent).
On the other hand, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) seemed to be a big gainer, as its Kindle Fire market share jumped by three percentage points to about 7.5 percent of all tablets. The Galaxy by Samsung increased its market share to nearly 4.5 percent, and the Nexus tablet by Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) posted a post-holiday gain of just north of 2 percent of market share.
“The tablet which brought the product category into the mainstream, Apple’s product has long been the king of the market. However, this Christmas marked a serious diversification in tablet shares,” according to Chitika’s report. The report went on to say, however, that Chitika fully expects Apple to return to the 80-percent mark in market share in pretty short order.
However, the report does show that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) made some progress in other areas this holiday season.
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“This substantial change underscores the inroads non-iPad tablets made this holiday season, reflecting some initial holiday sales estimates released by companies like Amazon,” the report stated.
This could signify a paradigm shift in the tablet space, much to the benefit of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), which has apparently blown away the direct competition of the Nook tablet by Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE:BKS). Digital content for the Nook was up 13 percent this Christmas over last year, but overall Nook sales were down nearly 13 percent (which includes the new Nook HD and HD+).
In related news, Chitika reported that the iPhone 5 now has a little more than 8.25 percent of the smartphone market, increasing its share by about 15 percent over pre-Christmas levels, while the Samsung Galaxy SIII now has about a 4.3 percent share.
In the week between Christmas and New Year’s, 50 million mobile devices were activated (iOS and Android) and about 1.75 billion apps were downloaded to those devices, according to analytics firm Flurry.
What do you think? Does the Kindle Fire have a chance to remain viable for Amazon? Do you think it will take more market share from Apple’s iPad in the coming year? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, and continue reading related coverage here:
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