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The world’s top smartphone manufacturer is also gaining serious traction in the Android (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) tablet market, especially in the United States and Canada, reports Mashable. Samsung (OTC:SSNLF) is already the most popular maker of Android smartphones.
Mashable looked at a study by online ad network Chitika, which found that Samsung tablets overtook Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle Fire as the most popular tablet for Web browsing. Samsung devices totaled 8.7 percent of all tablet Web surfing, up from 4.7 percent the year before. Amazon shrunk to 6.1 percent from 7.4 percent the previous year. As a point of comparison, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad made up 77.2 percent of the Web surfing in Chitika’s sample.
These tablet trends in Web usage also reflect the reality that Samsung tablets and Android tablets in general are becoming a much larger share of the tablet market. Samsung tablets made up 18 percent of the tablet market in 2013. Collectively, Android tablets made up 63 percent of the tablet market that year. Since then, Samsung has grown to 23 percent of the tablet market according to the company’s estimates, per BGR.
An uptick in Web usage may be due to the increase in Samsung and other Android tablets in the market. As browsing the Web is such a common use of tablets that it is the factor Chitika choose to look at in its study, the math may be a simple case of more tablets, more online time.
Part of the reason why Apple’s tablets make up such a high percentage of the mobile Web time looked at in the study was that until last year, Apple dominated the market. Now, it is losing its market share thanks to increased competition from Android tablets. Based on single companies, instead of Android versus Apple, Apple still comes in on top, with a 32 percent market share of the tablet market.
The company also sold a record-breaking 26 million tablets in its first quarter of 2014, which includes the 2013 holiday season. However, iPad sales are slipping, as seen in Apple’s recent quarterly report for its second quarter of fiscal year 2014, which includes the post-holiday shopping season. This provides an opportunity for Samsung and other Android devices to become the tablet of choice among consumers.
Regardless of the brand and operating system, tablet adoption in general is growing among Americans. Tablet popularity has increased sharply since the iPad was first introduced in 2010. The Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of American adults in its survey sample owned a tablet in a January 2014 report.
This was an increase from its last results in September 2013, which reported that 34 percent of American adults owned a tablet. These results are also a significant jump from when it began reporting tablet ownership in May 2010. At that point, only 3 percent of its survey sample reported owning a tablet device.
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