The new Google Nexus 7 tablet (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)Google's expected announcement today of the new Nexus 7, it carried on with the narrative that there are two tablet ecosystems, finely balanced, but with the improved specifications and new OS in the Nexus 7, the Android platform is sneaking ahead. That's a good way to lay it out, but the usage numbers are less kind to the Android platform.
In terms of market share in shipments, Android is on top of iOS according to IDC, by 56.5% compared to 39.6% (Q1 2013 numbers). Although this will be shared out over a number of manufactures (notably Amazon and Samsung, alongside Google's Nexus range of devices), I would expect Google to be happy with those numbers.
What they should be more worried about is the incredibly low usage of these tablets. They're selling, but they're not being used. To take another measurement, Piper Jaffray's look at the mobile browser share puts iOS on 63% and Android on 28%.
As I noted yesterday, one of the key income streams in the modern mobile ecosystem is that of advertising, and here Android is in second place. Looking specifically at the tablet market for Q2 2013, the market share using Opera's Mediaworks platform shows Apple with 91.2% of the market, Samsung's range of Galaxy branded tablets at 6.1% of the market, and the Google Nexus bundled in the other category sitting on 1.54%.
Perhaps those numbers are an outlier? Advertising network Chitika has also released data on tablet usage, this time for June 2013. Apple's combined range of iPad tablets has 84.3%, with just over 14% of the remaining tablet market using Android... Google's Nexus range has an overall 1.2% share, behind the Kindle Fire (5.7%), the Samsung Galaxys (4.2%), and the Android powered Barnes & Noble Nook range (1.2%).
There's a lot of love in the media for Android tablets, and the devices do have their champions. But the discrepancy between the number of Android tablets sold and how little they are being used in comparison to Apple's iPads should be ringing alarm bells with Google. Will the new Nexus 7 be a hit with the public? If it is, will they start interacting with advertising and using their tablet any more than they are now?
news by July 25, 2013 at 08:06AM
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