Kindle Fire, Android Tablets Chip Away At iPad Marketshare

The Apple iPad line of devices may still be the top-selling tablets on the market, but they are quickly losing ground to the Amazon Kindle and various other Google Android based tablets.

The team at Chitika Insights examined more than 100 million smartphone and tablet ad impressions from December 1 to December 27, 2012 throughout Canada and the United States. The firm found that tablet use among Amazon, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft gained a 5.5 percent market share over the same period. In the meantime, Apple iPad devices lost 7.14 percent of the market.

The Amazon Kindle Fire line saw the biggest improvement, increasing from 3.03 percent of the market to a 7.51 percent share. Samsung’s Galaxy tablets also witnessed a large jump from 1.38 percent to 4.39 percent. In third place was the Google branded Nexus tablet, which rose from a marketshare of just 0.92 percent to 2.04 percent. Even the struggling Microsoft Surface tablet line showed improvement from 0.17 percent to 0.40 percent.

The biggest loser in the study appears to be the BlackBerry Playbook, which decreased from a 0.68 percent ad impression share to just 0.02 percent.

While the Apple iPad line lost some market share, its 7.15 percent drop still leaves the company with a 78.9 percent stronghold over the tablet market.

In the coming weeks, Chitika expects Apple to increase its market share close to the 80 percent mark as new devices are used less frequently and current Apple users level the ad impression playing field.

Do you think increased competition in the tablet market will continue to chip away at the marketshare for the Apple iPad line of tablets?