During the fourth quarter of 2012, tablet sales saw 75.3% year-over-year growth, according to the latest research figures from IDC. These sales estimates underscore the trend that tablet and mobile devices are now driving growth in personal computing. Similar figures have been reported by BI Intelligence, which projects tablet sales to exceed PC sales by 2015 – making the tablet industry a $100+ billion market.

To determine the current distribution of Web usage among leading tablet devices following the holiday season, Chitika Insights sampled U.S. and Canadian tablet ad impressions running through the Chitika Ad Network. The data used to compile current market share (for the “Tablet Usage Share” bar chart) was drawn across the time range of January 19^th to January 25^th 2013. The historical data set utilized for the latter line graph was gathered from December 1^st 2012 to January 27^th 2013.

Similar to statistics reported by Localytics, Chitika Insights observed a strong presence of Kindle Fire usage in the Android tablet market following the holiday season.  The share of North American tablet traffic coming from users of Kindle Fire tablets grew from 4.88 impressions per 100 iPad impressions (as reported in December) to 9.48 impressions, or 7.7% of the market as a whole. Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy, and Barnes & Nobile Nook tablets also saw smaller gains this past month, with all three now constituting a combined 6.7% of North American tablet Web traffic.

As observed in our post-holiday mobile device report, it appears that Christmas was the point at which tablet usage shares dramatically shifted. There, we measured Kindle Fire usage share within our network at 7.51%, and it has remained relatively the same at 7.7% one month later. Similarly, the iPad was at 79% following the holiday season, and has recovered slightly to 81%.

The iPad-focused line graph in this article illustrates that usage share numbers in January are in line with the predictions contained in the earlier report. For additional details of the model and analysis Chitika used for those predictions, see the accompanying Chitika white paper here.