Microsoft, Amazon Slice Into iPad Market

While the company’s iPhone showed gains in its post-Christmas share of usage, the iPad from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) did not fare as well. The iPhone was the only smartphone to post a usage share gain in the days after Christmas, up 1.8% to a 54.3% total share of North American usage.

The iPad faced much stiffer competition, with the Kindle Fire from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and the Surface from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) combining to grab 1.3% of the iPad’s share of usage. The various iPads still take the lion’s share of the tablet usage market in North America, grabbing 76%. compared 9.4% for second-place Amazon and 5.9% for third-place Samsung Electronics. Microsoft claims 2.3% of total tablet usage and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) trails with 2.0%.

The data was collected and reported by online ad network Chitika. The company counts impressions generated only by Web browsers serving ads on its network. It does not track adds served by apps.

According to Chitika, this is the second consecutive year in which Amazon’s Kindle Fire has shown the greatest usage gain in the period immediately after Christmas. This indicates that consumers may be more interested in purchasing lower-priced tablets as gifts and that Amazon’s strategy of pushing its Kindle and Kindle Fire as gateways into the company’s online store may be a solid win for Amazon.

Amazon uses a proprietary version of Google’s Android operating system, and when all the Android devices are totaled together, Android’s share adds up to 17.3% of usage.

The usage data also indicates that the market for smartphones in North America has reached maturity. The relatively small share changes in the smartphone usage market are not likely to reshape the market.

In the tablet market, however, Microsoft’s share rose from 0.4% in 2012 to 2.3% this year, a relatively huge gain. Apple is likely to continue to dominate the Web usage market; its position is simply too massive to overcome. But the gains posted by Microsoft and Amazon indicate that there is an opening for products that are competitively priced.