Saturday, August 24, 2013

Samsung still top Android smartphone maker, but missing target on tablets



According to the latest data Android users prefer smartphones rather than tablets. A new report by Flurry shows that only 12 percent of Android devices are tablets. In comparison, some 28 percent of Apple devices are either an iPad or an iPad mini, and only 72 percent are iPhones. Apple’s biggest rival is of course Samsung and while Samsung is still King of the Android smartphone market, the company does seem to be struggling with its tablets. Samsung’s smartphone/tablet ratio is less than the overall Android average and way less than Apple’s. The new data shows that while 91 percent of Samsung’s Android powered devices are smartphones only 9 percent are tablets.
For a company as large and successful as Samsung this is surprising as really it should be leading the way in Android tablets. Of course there is lots of competition in the tablet market and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab range competes with the likes of Google (with its Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 offerings) and with Amazon (and its Kindle Fire line-up). Pricing is always a key factor but so is specification and at the moment the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 beat Samsung’s offerings hands-down.

Flurry
The new report also looks at the amount of time spent using different types of apps. Android tablets owners spend 64 percent more time using apps than Android smartphone users. But smartphone users, on average, spend five times as much time using Business apps compared to tablet users. However education and gaming apps are favored more by tablet users than smartphone owners.
As for Samsung smartphone owners, they spend 14 percent more time using apps than owners of other Android smartphones, while Samsung tablet owners spend 10 percent more time using apps than other Android tablet owners. Does this mean that Samsung owners have more time on their hands? Well it might be so, because according to Flurry owners of Samsung tablets spend more time than other Android tablet users using communication apps like voice over IP and texting!

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