Commentary

Tablets Deliver On The Moment Of Truth

Sony-TabletJim Kruger, digital and social media manager at Buick, told OMMA Tablet Revolution conference attendees Thursday that tablets give brands the opportunity to reach a whole new generation of tech-savvy buyers and early adopters of technology. He said the carmaker continues to see Web site traffic from tablets rise about 23% sequentially.

Some of that traffic comes from three casual games designed, in part, by digital agency Digitas to educate consumers about fuel-saving benefits of Buick technology. In fact, the Buick Fuel Efficiency games were downloaded 8,500 times in the first three weeks -- some of those from Facebook.

Overall, worldwide mobile PC shipments grew 12% sequentially, and 44% year-on-year, reaching 88 million units in Q4 2011, according to NPD DisplaySearch. The data firm attributes the growth to strong demand for tablets. Growth of tablet shipments rose 42% sequentially and 210% year-on-year, reaching 31.7 million units in Q4 2011.

When Buick relaunched the Moment of Truth campaign, Kruger said more than 70% of all views come from tablets. It's interesting to see the demographics that Buick attempts to hit. According to Nielsen and NM Insite, 42% of tablet owners use them daily while watching TV. Of those who use a tablet when watching TV, 57% check email, 44% surf the Web for unrelated information, and 44% visit social networking sites. About 53% are males, 60% are Caucasian, 17% are Hispanic, 12% are African-American, and the remainder are Asian. About 33% are between the ages of 18 and 34.

Apple's 26.6% worldwide share in Q4 2011, largely the result of its dominant position in tablets, propelled the Cupertino, Calif. company to nearly three times the shipments of Hewlett-Packard. The other brands -- Dell, Acer Group and Lenovo -- in the top five market share rankings relied almost exclusively on notebook PC shipments to establish their positions.

In the tablet PC market, Apple continued to show strong growth across all regions, capturing 59.1% share in Q4 2011. Newcomers Amazon, and Barnes and Noble took the No. 2 and No. 5 spots with 16.7% and 3.5% share, respectively. Both brands focused on North America in their market entries. Samsung improved in all its key markets -- particularly Europe, the Middle East and Asia (EMEA), helping it to reach .67% market share, according to NPD DisplaySearch.

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