Ahead of Microsoft’s Surface event on Tuesday, Chitika took a look at some usage statistics in the non-iPad tablet market, and the results for Microsoft’s devices were a tad bit worrying. Based on tens of millions of U.S. and Canadian online ad impressions, Chitika found that the Surface and Surface 2 usage share in the tablet market had fallen from 7.5% to 6.7% since February 1st, even excluding iPad usage.
“Surface tablet users generated a marginally decreasing share of U.S. and Canadian non-iPad tablet Web traffic as we moved through late Q1 and early Q2,” reports Chitika. “This trend follows substantial usage share growth for the device family during the latter half of 2013, when Surface’s non-iPad usage share went from 3.3% in June, to 5.7% in September, to nearly 8% leading into last holiday season.”
Despite some significant progress last year after the release of the Surface 2 tablets, Microsoft appears to be losing its grasp on the small market share it had gathered. New hardware was partially responsible for the increased interest in the Surface, but each of the three major upticks in usage also corresponded with a price cut.
Chitika also notes that since the Surface tablets come preloaded with Microsoft Office, productivity on the device isn’t entirely limited to online usage. That said, there’s no question that the Surface hasn’t been the success Microsoft hoped it would be. We’ll see if the Surface Pro 3 can change that.
