New fourth quarter 2014 tablet market share data suggests that Microsoft may have increased its market share with the Surface tablets by as much as 60 percent year-over-year compared to the same time last year. While Microsoft had a 1 percent market share last year, it is now up to 1.6 percent. This is still small compared to Apple, which is leading the charge at 79.9 percent, but it shows that Microsoft is gaining market share while some of its competitors are dropping.
This was how Chitika Insights got their market share numbers:
To determine the distribution of Web usage among leading tablet brands for September 2014, Chitika Insights sampled tens of millions of U.S. and Canadian tablet-based online ad impressions running through the Chitika Ad Network. The data used to compile current usage share were drawn across the time range of September 1 through 30, 2014. The historical year-over-year data were drawn across the time range of September 1 through 30, 2013.
The interesting thing is that Microsoft's numbers is based purely on the Windows RT ecosystem, which means the Surface RT and the Surface 2. Chitika did not account for the laptop-like Surface Pro model and the data definitely does not include the Surface Pro 3, which is selling well for Microsoft. It would be interesting to see how much different Microsoft's numbers would look if the Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, and Surface Pro 3 figures were accounted for.
Apple dropped from 81 percent compared to last year. The only tablet manufacturers to gain market share in the same period are Samsung, Google, Nextbook, and Verizon with its new Ellipsis brand of Android slates.
What do you make of the data from Chitika?
