Post-holiday Android tablet Web traffic grows, iPad share shrinks

Computerworld - Web traffic on Android tablets from various vendors grew substantially after the Christmas holiday, cutting the iPad's share by more than 7%.

Nonetheless, Web traffic on Apple's iPad continues to outdistance the competition overall, now accounting for nearly 79% of all Web page impressions, according to data compiled by Chitika Insights.

Chitika, which runs Web-based ad network., said its findings are based on hundreds of millions of ad impressions from Dec. 1 to Dec. 27.

Chitika found that the iPad's share of tablet Web traffic declined by 7.1 percentage points -- from 86% to 78.9% -- after Christmas Day, 2012.

Kindle Fire had the largest share of the Android tablets, at 7.51%, up 3 percentage points since Christmas. The Samsung Galaxy tablets (7-in. And 10-in.) hold a 4.3% share, up 1.38 percentage points since Christmas, while the share of Web traffic on Google Nexus (7-in. and 10-in.) devices has doubled to 2% since Dec. 25.

Meanwhile, Apple's iPhone 5 maintains the largest share of smartphone Web traffic -- 8.27%. The iPhone is followed by the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone, which holds a 4.29% share of Web traffic.

Chitika said the tablet results mark "substantial change [which] underscores the inroads non-iPad tablets made this holiday season."

But Chitika also said that iPad's share of tablet traffic is likely to return to the 80% range as users return from vacation and browse less frequently on their new Android devices.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen, or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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