It has often been mentioned that although Android tablets seem to be selling rather well, they aren’t being used much. Apple’s Tim Cook uses Chitika’s data in his presentations, the most recent showing that iPad usage share was 81% in North America.
What always intrigued me about this data was how many Samsung Galaxy tablets were being used relative to the Google Nexus tablets. There were many reviews that praised both the specifications and the low price of the Google Nexus 7 tablet, whereas not so many praised the Samsung Galaxy tablets. However, if you look at the usage statistics from Chitika, Galaxy tablet usage is many times more than Nexus tablets.
So the question that I had was what are the Galaxy tablets that are selling. Are they the large size ~10-inch tablets or are they the 7-inch ones? Are they WiFi models or are they Galaxy Notes with 3G connectivity?
Until now, I didn’t know of a source where I could get the data to answer this. However, I recently learned that Mixpanel provides this data.
Looking at this data, it is evident that the answer is the Galaxy Note series. Although the Mixpanel data does not tell us which Galaxy Note models are included in the data, I strongly suspect that the phablet models are. If phablets are included, it explains why Galaxy Notes are being used so much. Otherwise, it’s hard to see why Galaxy tablets are selling whereas Nexus tablets are not.
So my tentative understanding is the following;
- Chitika’s 81% usage share iPad most likely includes phablets. Otherwise, it contradicts with Mixpanel’s data.
- If we exclude phablets from tablet web usage statistics (for both Chitika and Mixpanel data), iPad’s usage share is even higher than 81%.
P.S.
Looking at Mixpanel’s data, the Nexus 10 is really, really small. It’s quite clear that 10-inch Anroid tablets are hardly being used for web browsing.
Naofumi Kagami 