By As hot as Google’s tablets have been since the Nexus 7 launched earlier this year you’d think they were in the hands of pretty much everyone under the sun. Well, Chitika’s latest web traffic report, where they compared traffic between Google’s Nexus tablets and the Microsoft surface for a period of 7 days in November, says Google’s tablets are barely making a dent in web traffic. In fact, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 make up for less than 1% combined. How could this be?
Well, demand for Google’s products are seemingly high with the way delays have been going, but there is always the issue of relativity to consider. Demand looks like it’s through the roof because Google had problems meeting supply at one point, but perhaps supply was extremely low in the first place. No one knows how many units of the Nexus devices Google has sold thus far, really.
The Nexus 7’s supply/demand struggle leveled out quite some time ago, and it looks like the Nexus 10 is beginning to level out as well. If web traffic is still this low after the dust has settled then it implies the Nexus devices aren’t quite as hot as we’d be led to believe. There are a ton of variables to consider, of course.
For starters, Chitika is only one research firm, albeit a very significant one in the mobile advertising space. There’s also the aforementioned issue of not knowing Google’s exact shipment numbers. There’s little doubt that the Nexus tablets are hot within the techie crowd, but it appears it’s still a mere tadpole in the sea up against the rest of the crop (particularly Apple’s iPad).
For comparison’s sake, Chitika also showed where the Microsoft Surface resided for web traffic. It accounts for just .13%, a very minuscule amount even compared to the Nexus devices’ .91%. Again, slick marketing and a hush-mouth operation for shipment numbers would have Microsoft leading folks to believe that it’s happy with market penetration of its first Windows RT tablet, but third party analytics such as the kind Chitika provide tell the more accurate story in the absence of official numbers.
Long story short, if your name isn’t “Apple” then you probably aren’t enjoying a healthy market share in the tablet space right now. The iPad Mini surely helped fend the competition off even more effectively with its more attractive price point.
It would be interesting to see where other OEMs’ devices end up on the scale, such as the Amazon Kindle Fire or Samsung’s line of tablets. These enjoy more robust marketing campaigns so perhaps they’re faring a lot better in the overall scheme of things. We won’t have a clearer picture on a lot of that until early 2013 when the Q4’2012 reports are out, but we wouldn’t expect more than 10% of market share between Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows combined. We could be wrong, and you’d better believe we hope we’re wrong, but only time will tell.
[via WinSource]
You said “web traffic” a million times in that piece without ever specifying that it’s tablet web traffic.
It’s in the graphic.
The graphic is from the source article.
so you can’t put two and two together?
Yes … that’s why I made my post. My point was that the write-up was potentially misleading. I couldn’t have made that point if I was misled.
Sorry, thought it was evident. I’ll update to reflect that more clearly.
How do they calculate it?
What is considered web traffic? Is watching Netflix or YouTube on a Nexus 7 going to be included in this?
the question is do they count online traffic within apps to or is it just the browser. If its just the browser that alone could be the reason. I myself will use an app before going to the website when I have my phone.
How do they account for wifi usage / traffic? I have 3 tablets sucking down copious amounts of data… a little clarification would help as the specifics are a bit vague.
The question is… Does any of that matter?
no nexus 7 purchased before the 3g came out had mobile data enable. I use my hotspot on my phone and smash data. 45 to 60 gigs a month. however that usage would be seen as a one x+ not nexus seven because it’s tethering through my phone right?
It depends on what they’re using to determine what’s making the access. If it’s the web browser, then it wouldn’t come up as your phone.
Actually 1% for the Nexus tablets is fairly impressive all things considering. The Nexus 7 only started shipping 4 months ago and in that time it implies that 1 out of every 100 tablets being used is a Nexus 7. Keep in mind this does not factor in that a good percentage of the Nexus 7s purchased are probably being given as presents for Christmas so would not be reflected in chikita’s stats yet.
Also, over the past 2 years we’ve seen millions of XOOMs, Galaxy Tabs, Toshiba Thrives, Acer Iconia Tabs, Kindle Fires, Nook Colors and Tablets, Asus Transformer and of course 3 years and tens of millions of iPads sold etc in the market. So in 4 months…with a percentage not reflected due to being given as presents…they already have 1% of the market. That’s fairly impressive. I’d predict that that’ll double shortly after Xmas when the other N7s hit the internet and a year from now…with 12 months of additional sales to accumulate we’re probably talking about a 6-8% share of web traffic coming from Nexus tablets.
Yep, tablets like the iPad have been out for about three years nexus tablets have been out half a year quite impressive actually, if any correlation can be drawn then 1 of every 100 tablets is a nexus device. Since apple claimed 100 million iPads were sold as of October at least 1 million nexus devices. if it can be correlated that way.
I would imagine nexus users are a bit more savvy in managing their web traffic like turning off data at nights, removing auto backup like google backup which can eat gigs and maybe going through wifi more often which I imagine can’t be measured as accurately. Whereas the apple drone is probably constantly talking to the mother ship all day and all night.
First off I am not a fan boy, don’t own any Tablet, just curious when I see a headline like this. You are comparing apples (installed base, pun intended) versus oranges (shipments in this case two product that just started shipping).
Whatever web traffic means in this context one would expect Apple to be dominant because their installed tablet base is huge. I would expect Apple to continue to dominate this type of analysis for a few more years, or more! If you Google tablet market share you can see estimates of Android market share of SHIPMENTS this year to be about 40% +/- and maybe go over 50% next year. So that means Apple tablet installed based vis-a-vis Android (and Windows 8 for that matter) continues to grow.
I have no idea what Nexus tablets shipments are and what the installed base is but I am pretty sure that Nexus tablet impact on the installed tablet base and this type of analysis will be rather small for a long time to come.
I suppose if someone knew the total tablet installed base and accepted the .9% then you could get a good estimate of the number of Nexus tablets in the hands of users.
Edit: Ok so bored waiting for my laundry to dry….. I found 3 US installed Tablets (sorry Canada no data found) 47MM, 53MM and 54.8MM average about 51.6MM. Taking the 0.9% as a reasonable number gives you about 460,000 +/- (big margin of error haha) Nexus tablets out there in the USA (assuming the 0.9% is good for just the US). and about 67,000 +/- Surface tablets – which is pretty darn good for MSFT I think?
who is chikitia anyways. I love no-name ad companies who throw out these polls just so they can get some recognition. Half are in with iOS anyways.
Chitika?
Winsource?
Meh…
We talked about this before: Chitika measures this via ads and user agent. On iOS and Surface devices you only have one option returned. With Android there could be a wide variety of results, so they really have no way to break out Android web traffic. For example, look at the percentage that they show for “Linux desktop” and you’ll see what I mean. It’s quite a bit higher than most folks might expect.
Since there is no Flash available anymore for Android devices, I’m using Dolphin browser with the user agent set to iPad. That will skew the results.
One way to skew them. Another is that browsers like Firefox have it set to Linux.
And Nexus 7 in “Request Desktop Version” reports as “Chrome”.
Each of my 5 kids all have their own Nexus 7 tablets. Not a one of them uses it to browse the Internet. They browse using one of the way to many laptops in the house. Tablets are mainly just used for gaming and YouTube/Netflix.
I rarely use my tablets for surfing the web because it’s so good at very thing else
Chitika, tell me what’s wrong
You’re enchained by your own sorrow
In your eyes there is no hope for tomorrow
How I hate to see you like this
There is no way you can deny it
I can see that you’re oh so sad, so quiet
Smoke & Mirrors statistics.