Report: Nexus 7 Supply Issues Stall Growth

Google may be taking the ill-conceived Nexus Q back to the drawing board, but the Nexus 7 tablet has been quite a hit since it went on sale a few weeks ago. Since then, though, Google has faced a number of supply issues and the company even suspended sales of the 16GB for a few days to catch up with demand. The latest data from ad network Chitika shows how those supply issues have stalled the growth of Google’s first tablet – at least when measured by web traffic from Nexus 7 owners.

Just a few weeks ago, Chitika reported that the Nexus tablet was on its way to surpass the Kindle Fire in its traffic rankings. By now, the company predicted, the Google tablet was supposed to be ahead of the Fire. Instead, its latest data shows that it’s still trailing Amazon’s tablet by quite a bit. While traffic from the Nexus 7 to Chitika’s network of member sites grew rapidly during the first few weeks after it went on sale, growth stalled over the last three weeks. Chitika reports its tablet data relative to the iPad and the Nexus 7 currently accounts for 0.35 impressions per 100 iPad impressions. That’s virtually unchanged from the 0.3 impressions it reported three weeks ago.
With only a few new Nexus 7 owners surfing the web due to Google’s supply issues, the company’s numbers probably reflect the usage of existing users. ”While the Nexus 7 experienced a huge initial surge in both sales and Web traffic, users don’t seem to be surfing as much as one might expect them to.” As the novelty of the device wears off and as the honeymoon phase comes to an end, people simply don’t use it as much as they used to. Now that the Nexus 7 is back on sale, it will be interesting to see if the growth rate picks up again.