Javelin Strategy and Research issued a report concerning tablets and their effect on mobile consumer banking. The research firm’s data are according to two surveys from October and December of the previous year. The findings showed that 42 percent of the 16 million US tablet owners have an Android tablet.
Although Apple’s iPad is still leading the tablet market with 55 percent share, the difference was less than other estimates published. For example, Forrester Research discovered in September 2011 that Samsung, Motorola and Acer, the top 3 Android tablet makers, have a combined market share 12 percent.
Mary Monahan, research director of Javelin, said that Android tablets take in a relatively huge market share.
Since the respondents were given the choice to specify if they have more than one tablet, Javelin’s total was 119 percent. Strictly speaking, Android had a share of approximately 35 percent in the US tablet market.
However, Amazon’s Kindle Fire was not yet released at the time Forrester did its survey last September. Based on data from Javelin, 10 percent of American adults owned a Kindle Fire by the month of December.
Javelin expects that the iPad will be exceeded by Android, as Kindle further boosts Android’s market share.
On the other hand, Windows tablets took in an unexpected 10 percent of the market share by December 2011. As for Blackberry PlayBooks, it took in a 9 percent market share.
Nevertheless, the iPad is still leading with 36 percent, followed by Android with 27 percent, and Windows tablets ranked 3rd with 21 percent.
According to Monahan, 44 percent of tablet owners have used their tablet to bank in the last three months. Moreover, consumers are using their tablets to check information on their accounts instead of personally going to banks to make transaction or pay bills. USAA, Bank of America and Citi are the three banks that have good mobile banking apps, as mentioned by Monahan.
