Chitika Insights’ last report on the Microsoft Surface observed steady, moderate usage share growth for the tablet family within North America. Since that time, retailers like eBay and Best Buy unveiled temporary discounts on the Surface RT model, and our most recent usage statistics point to a substantial usage share boost for the tablet around the sale dates. This recent growth has resulted in Microsoft Surface Web usage surpassing that of Barnes and Noble’s Nook, making it the fifth-largest tablet traffic source in North America behind Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and Google.
After helming the positive turnaround of IBM’s PC business, Lenovo is hoping to build upon Motorola’s recent innovations and gain a significant foothold in the smartphone market. Already, analysts have pointed to Lenovo’s acquisition instantly having made the company the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer. Yet, despite some positive signals, Web usage statistics point to Motorola having several hurdles to overcome in order to pose a serious challenge to Apple and Samsung within North America.
Within North America, tablet usage figures directly following Christmas pointed to a surging Amazon and Microsoft, but as expected, Web usage share changes observed directly following the holiday did moderate as North American users went back to a more traditional week, and a correspondingly more typical level of browsing activity. Through a comparison of the below January numbers with what we observed in our last quarterly tablet update study this past fall, a clearer picture emerges as to how the larger tablet usage environment has truly changed. With the glut of new devices now in the hands of consumers – which tablet manufacturers are seeing their devices used more frequently by their new owners?
Next to Apple, Korean-headquartered Samsung has perhaps realized the biggest benefits from the growth of the mobile marketplace. Within North America, Samsung smartphones represent the largest single Android manufacturer traffic source, and its share of tablet Web usage ranks behind only Apple and Amazon. In Chitika Insights’ latest study examining how Samsung Web traffic breaks down by device, it’s clear that despite Samsung’s wide range of offerings, there are a few notable points of strength in its device lineup.
This past holiday season represented the cap on yet another banner year for the sales of mobile devices, and subsequent usage figures exemplify this flurry of activity. After examining changes in North American Web traffic share, we found that Amazon and Microsoft had the most promising holiday seasons within the tablet marketplace while Apple was the only manufacturer to gain usage share amongst all major smartphone competitors.
To provide a longer-term view of iOS version distribution over time, Chitika Insights examined a full year of iOS version distribution.
In Chitika Insights’ previous report on the Microsoft Surface RT, data pointed to a substantial growth in the device’s North American usage share following a price decrease in mid-July. In this latest analysis, Chitika Insights found that usage of Microsoft’s latest tablet device, the Surface 2, experienced some notable growth in the month following its North American release on October 22, 2013. Additionally, Surface tablet usage share as a whole continued to rise from October through November.
For website owners looking to monetize their online presence, generating traffic to a particular webpage is the often the first step towards attaining that goal. Following that and other initial hurdles towards attracting a growing online audience come the nuanced aspects of improving ad click through rates (CTR) on each webpage. To quantify this issue, Chitika Insights examined ad click activity across the entire Chitika network, breaking the results down by referring domain (e.g. Google, within the site, an outside site, etc.)
Moto X was released in August 2013 and is largely regarded as the first new, flagship-type Motorola device since the company was acquired by Google in 2012. Subsequent growth in terms of Web usage has followed Moto X’s release, with a steady increase in Web traffic share over the month of October 2013. Chitika Insights also examined the share growth of Motorola smartphone Web traffic in North America, which also shows a steady increase in the Web usage share.
