Jumptap, a mobile advertising agency has released statistics which shows that the HP TouchPad apps have already gathered 8% of the tablet mobile advertising share, which is comparable to Android’s 9.4%. This is a surprising number as Android tablets have been on sale for some time, while the HP Touchpad has been on the market for a mere couple of weeks. That said, the $99 has probably helped, but still, these numbers make us wonder…1/ How many Android tablets have been sold?
It’s hard to get an accurate number because few Android tablet makers brags about their sales, but there are at least 2 million of Samsung galaxy tab in the wild. If you add all the other manufacturers, the figure has to be close to 4 million of units. The Touchpad stock was somewhere around 250k to 300k units, so we have a situation where Android tablets outnumber Touchpads by 10 to 1.
2/ Are Jumptap numbers representative?
While the statistics are very interesting, do they provide an accurate picture of what’s going on? I don’t know, but I doubt it. Things just don’t seem to add up. Android tablets have more apps, more users, and probably more advertisers too. And if you take into account that there are many more Android tablets, this would mean that advertising on Android performs 10X less, which is unlikely. I personally don’t think that these numbers are showing the big picture.
3/ Are Touchpad users more ad-friendly?
Different platforms may attract different type of users, but ironically, the Touchpad seems to have attracted cost-conscious buyers who did not want to spend a whole lot. Therefore, it would be surprising if they had a ferocious appetite for ads. I don’t think that the Touchpad has attracted a “golden” crowd for advertisers, at least, not to the extent that those numbers would suggest.
4/ Do cheap tablets sell?
“Cheap” isn’t the name of the game here, but “good enough” certainly is. The Touchpad adventure has shown one thing: when it comes to tablet, “price/quality” has been the issue that (almost) every Android tablet has bumped into. Why? Simply because at $499, the iPad has a better price/quality ratio than most (but not all) of its competitors. There’s a reason why Apple is going legally after the Galaxy Tab 10.1: today, it’s the only tablet that can compete on equal terms with the iPad 2.
This also shows that buyers know what they are doing (this is a nightmare for marketing departments), and can assess the value of the products in the market. Price it right and it sells quickly. The issue is: can companies make products attractive without going out of business? That remains to be seen.
Link: Jumptap
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