iPad Is Still King Of The Web With 87% Of Tablet Web Traffic [Report]

(4:00 am PDT, Dec 31st 2012)

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Thanks to affordable offerings like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Google Nexus 7, Android tablets continue to increase their market share and claw away at the iPad’s lead. However, Apple’s tablet remains king of the web, accounting for a whopping 87% of tablet web traffic in North America.

According to analytics firm Chitika, for every 100 web page views on an iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire has just 4.88, while Samsung’s Galaxy tablets have just 3.04. Meanwhile, Google’s Nexus 10 and Nexus 7 tablets see just 1.22 page views per every 100 on the iPad.

“Eighty-seven percent of the tablet web traffic in North America is generated by iPad,” said Chitika’s Gabe Donnini.

That’s quite staggering when you think about it. The iPad accounts for more than half of the tablet market share (around 53.8%) in North America, but according to a report from IDC earlier this month, Android tablets are to claim 42.7% of the market by the end of the year (today).

There’s not a massive difference between them, then, and yet web traffic suggests the opposite. The thing is, there are so many different Android tablet models floating around, from so many different manufacturers, that even popular devices like those mentioned above claim just a small share of Android’s pie.

Chitika’s data came from an analysis of tablet web traffic in the United States and Canada between December 8 and December 14. This doesn’t take the festive period into account, of course, which will have seen many more tablets entering the market. However, Chitika says it will revisit these figures soon to establish the impact Christmas has had on the data.

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  • delesh

    I always question Chitika’s numbers because they base them off the browser user agent and I know that my android devices (as well as almost people I know) are set to show the desktop webpage and send a user agent identifying them as x86 desktop devices. So I know at least any numbers from myself are not being counted by Chitika. Just seems strange that tablets that hold almost half of the market share would have such low web usage numbers. Nobody seems to question it though. Just a thought.

    • Michael Scrip

      Good point.

      Is the default user-agent for Android tablets x86 desktop? Or is that something that has to be changed manually?

      I only ask because the Nexus 7 is supposedly selling a million units per month. And I doubt all those people are switching their user agent.

      Same for the Kindle Fire… even fewer geeky people use those devices.

      • delesh

        No, the default browser is set to show the mobile version, but all it takes is to click on the “show desktop version” to toggle it to desktop mode, so it’s not difficult. There are other hacks to make it permanent, which, as you said, most people would not likely do. As for the kindle fire, I know the original model’s Silk enhanced (default) user agent was set to show as an osx system. Not sure how they identify now. So, I’m not saying the numbers are wrong, but just wanted to bring up the point that there may be some factors that are skewing them. As the user agent strings on iOS devices seem to be more reliably identifiable.

        • Michael Scrip

          Yeah… it’s easy to switch your user agent… but how many people do you think are really doing that? Or even know what a user agent is?

          Like you said… almost half of the tablet market is Android… you’d think web browsing would be a very common task on those devices.

          There have been plenty of reports from a variety of sources… Chitika, Onswipe, StatCounter, Ooyala, ComScore, NetMarketshare, etc.

          They are all saying the same thing… the iPad is crushing it in web browsing.

          Surely they can’t all be wrong…

          • delesh

            They don’t need to manually switch the user agent, they just need to ask for the device to load the desktop version. It’s a simple button press. So I think there may be quite a few using this feature.

            An interesting point I just noticed when looking at the Chitika report was this at the bottom: “Looking back at the October tablet report you will see a growth in Kindle Fire’s share of tablet Web traffic. On November 8, Amazon published a blog post detailing an extensive list of possible variations in user agent strings to identify Kindle devices. This type of transparency allows Chitika Insights, and other market researchers, to provide the most accurate data possible when reporting on the state of the Web usage market. As such, the numbers we are reporting this month for Kindle Fire have changed.” The numbers changed from 0.59 to 4.05. This change moved the Kindle Fire from second to last to first among the non-iOS tablets. So there may still be some significant variances in numbers if they don’t have accurate user agent data.

  • Smythe Richbourg

    I’m with @delesh:disqus and @michaelscrip:disqus on this. I don’t use Flash, so set my desktop machine to view as iPad, which brings me the iPad version of the video. I don’t switch it by default, but whenever a page asks for that deprecated technology plug-in, a quick trip to the Develop menu reloads it as an iPad, and I’m usually off to the races.

About the author

Killian BellKillian Bell is a freelance writer based in the UK. He has an interest in all things tech and also writes for TechnoBuffalo. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell, or through his website.

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