The immense popularity of the Nexus 7 is no surprise to anyone after all the achievements it accomplished in 2013, but today we have news from Japan that confirms once again the enormous appreciation users have for the Google and Asus tablet . Japanese consumers are now choosing the Nexus 7 over the iPad . The key, according to the firm that conducted the study, is the price of each device, although this is still surprising coming from a culture so often drawn to Apple products.
CNET has published the results of a study conducted with a sample of 2.400 electronics stores in Japan, revealing that the Nexus 7 is the most in-demand tablet, capturing 44,4% of the market compared to 40,1% for the iPad across all its versions. This data might go unnoticed in any other country, but Japan is a global leader in the technology market, and these figures reflect something significant, especially considering the country's long-standing devotion to Apple and its voracious appetite for every new Apple product that arrives in its stores.
According to this study, originally published in Nikkei, the highest-circulation newspaper in Japan, the shortage of the iPad mini in some stores may have influenced the results to some extent (though not significantly), but the main differentiating factor is the price at which both products are sold. The Nexus 7 costs $100 less in Japan than the cheapest iPad .
This news is truly a milestone, not only because what's happening today in Japan is (under normal circumstances) what will happen in the rest of the world a little later. Furthermore, we were used to saying that Android was closing in on Apple in the tablet sector , and in this case, a single Android tablet (perhaps the most popular) has dethroned the iPad in all its variants. Obviously, the remaining 15,5% market share belongs to other tablets running Google 's operating system , so the iPad 's market share losses are becoming significant in that country.
The data on tablet sales in Japan, according to this newspaper, were 3,6 million units in 2012 and it is estimated that in 2013 they will rise to 4,9 million.