— Barnes & Noble Nook Tablets See Usage Spike —

E-Book readers are mobile tablets whose primary use is for reading digitized books. Recently, however, most tablets have incorporated an E-Book reader application into their already multi-functional capabilities. To stay competitive in the fast evolving tablet industry, E-Book reader manufacturers have had success integrating a variety of previously tablet-only features as well. Currently, there are more similarities between e-book readers and smart tablets than there are differences. Users should, theoretically, be taking advantage of all these new add-ons, so Chitika Insights conducted its latest study to investigate this question when it came to browsing the Internet.  The results below compare recent Web usage growth of both the Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook:

To quantify this study, Chitika Insights conducted a user-agent analysis on hundreds of millions of impressions from the Chitika Advertising Network, covering a week’s worth of data from June and August, respectively.  We found that between June and August, the Barnes & Noble Nook’s Web usage increased 25.8% while the Kindle Fire’s increased by a meager 3.8%. This indicates that Nook users are much more active online than the Kindle Fire users.

While Amazon reported a 29% increase in sales of the Kindle Fire during the last quarter, there is no apparent correlation between the sales figures and actual Web usage. On the other hand, Barnes & Noble reported a 10.38% loss in Nook-related revenue during the last quarter, while its tablet’s Web usage increased significantly. With both devices having substantial user bases, this data indicates Nook users having very different usage habits as compared to Kindle Fire owners.

With both companies announcing price cuts for their tablets this month, Barnes & Noble also hopes to improve the Nook’s fortunes with Microsoft’s recent investment of $300 million in its flagship tablet. The Redmond-based giant promises to add a new Windows 8 application on Nook, which may add “hundreds of millions of potential new customers.” Despite this news, Barnes & Noble should not get comfortable with its position, as reports have pointed to Amazon ambitiously rolling out five or six different Kindle Fire versions this year.

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