Apple US iPad marketshare slipping due to Kindle Fire and Google Nexus 7: Survey

Apple’s US marketshare may have slipped to as low as 50%, with competing tablets including Google’s Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire making significant headway in the US market, according to a new survey.

The survey by New York-based consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates, published by the LA Times, suggests that 50% of US consumers using a tablet device opted for an iPad, down from 74% in previous surveys.

The survey of 4,734 US smartphone and tablet consumers found that strong growth from competing low-cost Android devices, in particular Amazon’s Kindle Fire (with a marketshare of 22%) and Google’s recently released Nexus 7, are cited as a key reason for the decline.

However, the figures in the survey sharply diverge from an IDC report in May which showed Apple’s worldwide iPad marketshare had grown during the first quarter from 54.7% to 68%, with Amazon’s Kindle marketshare sharply declining from 16.8% to 4%.

The divergence in results might be due to differences in methodology between the two surveys, or a result of US consumer choices in the tablet market diverging from global trends.