Over the Christmas holiday, Android (News - Alert) tablet Web traffic increased by five percent, knocking iPad traffic down seven percent.

According to advertising research firm Chitika, Amazon's Kindle Fire performed best while Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 rose slightly among the Android tablet rankings. Google's Nexus and Microsoft's (News - Alert) Surface only showed slight improvements.

According to Chitika, the iPad dominated the weeks leading up to Christmas, accounting for 86 percent of all tablet Web traffic. After December 25, however, iPad devices only accounted for 79 percent.


Image via www.amazon.com

As far as smartphones go, both Apple’s iPhone (News - Alert) 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S III showed a steady increase in use, with each device adding about a percentage of web traffic share.

“The change in smartphone market share doesn’t seem to be too surprising,” Chitika’s Gabe Donnini said. “But the data on tablets that we observed was very interesting. Android was the clear operating system of choice for consumers giving tablets in the holiday season.”

Chitika's metrics measured all iPad Web traffic together, combining both new and existing usage of every iPad model. Chitika said the tablet results “mark substantial change which underscores the inroads non-iPad tablets made this holiday season." The research firm noted that iPad's share of tablet traffic is likely to return to the 80 percent range as users return from vacation and browse less frequently on their new Android devices.

The numbers provided by Chitika reflect Web traffic share only, although Android tablet market share has recently pulled even with the iPad.

The true winner in the tablet battle may be mobile application developers. According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, the week between Christmas and New Year's Day was record-breaking. Android and iOS saw a combined total of 1.76 billion apps downloaded, while more than 50 million new device activations were recorded.

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