Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet overtakes Kindle Fire in one key metric

When it comes to tablet Web traffic, there's the Apple iPad and there's everyone else.

According to a new study from Chitika, a company that monitors online ad impressions, over 90 percent of all tablet traffic comes from iPad devices. In a distant second place? The Samsung Galaxy Tab line, which accounted for 1.77 percent of the impressions collected by Chitika. 

But it's further back in the pack that things start to get really interesting. To wit: At some point this month, Chitika says, the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet overtook the Amazon Kindle Fire in terms of user time spent online. Horizons readers will remember that the Fire was released with great fanfare (and amid generally positive reviews). Sales seemed solid.

And yet Chitika says the Fire is suddenly lagging behind the Nook. 

"Barnes & Nobles’ e-reader with tablet capabilities now accounts for 0.85 percent of all tablet web traffic versus Kindle Fire’s .71 percent," the Chitika team writes. "In the time since that study, Barnes & Noble has launched a new advertising campaign, and their newest device sold out within weeks. While that device is a simple e-reader without Web browsing capabilities, the increase in Nook use may be attributed to brand familiarity through these advertisements."

In related news, Microsoft could be close to releasing a tablet powered by Windows RT, a mobile-centric version of its Windows 8 operating system. While a company such as Samsung, for instance, doesn't have the same kind of market clout as Apple, Microsoft certainly does, and depending on what kind of features this (as of yet speculative) machine gets, the tablet game may be in for a bit of a shake-up. 

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