Jumptap: Early Days For The New iPad Show A ‘Heavy’ But Still Marginal Impact On Traffic

The new iPad from Apple has so far smashed all of its own sales records for previous tablet models, selling 3 million units in its opening weekend, with total sales projections for 2012 at up to 66 million.

But according to some early (possibly too early?) figures from the mobile ad network Jumptap, that is not yet translating into a surge of traffic from the devices.

On the opening day, the iPad represented 0.52 percent of total iPad network traffic. That figure peaked at 2.28 percent on day three, and then declined to 1.92 percent of traffic by day six. In contrast, the iPad and iPad 2 each had 45 percent or more of total iPad traffic, Jumptap says in its latest MobileSTAT Report.

But is this too early to call? It seems that the low numbers are mainly due to the fact that even with sales going strong in its opening days, the total number of new iPad devices is still small compared to the embedded base of iPads.

In Q1 2012 alone, Apple noted that it sold 15.43 million iPad devices, a 111 percent increase over the same period a year ago. That embedded base is bound to outweigh that of 3 million-plus new owners.

What’s perhaps more notable here is where traffic appeared to decline with the introduction of the new iPad. Paran Johar, Jumptap’s CMO, notes that in its network of 107 million mobile users, traffic on the iPad 2 slightly declined after the introduction of the new iPad. That seems to run counter to the idea that the most likely people to upgrade will be those owning the first iPad. But what it might really appear to illustrate is that fanboys early adopters are simply remaining true to form, with the first buyers being those who bought the iPad 2 just when it came out.

Another noteworthy trend picked out by Jumptap in its latest report looks at how Wi-Fi is being used by smartphone owners. It turns out that just as users of the iPad tend to use Wi-Fi more than 3G and 4G connections, the same goes for iPhone consumers, who are opting for it more than Android and BlackBerry device owners.

Jumptap notes that 58 percent of iPhone users turn to Wi-Fi on their devices to use data, compared to 35 percent of Android users and 41 percent of BlackBerry users. Jumptap’s guess: no 4G on iPhones. But others might argue that it has to do with cellular connectivity simply being more patchy on the iPhone than on other devices. It could also be down to data plans still priced at a premium for iPhone owners.

Figures from Localytics last month found that only six percent of iPad traffic on its network was coming from cellular connections.

Jumptap also dove into providing some demographics on users of two comparable gaming apps, Angry Birds and Words With Friends.

While Angry Birds is significantly more popular (20 million daily active users, compared to 7.9 million on Words), Words with Friends appears to attract more monied players: 24 percent of Angry Birds’ user base have incomes of over $100,000, compared to 40 percent for Words. Words With Friends also had more Democrat users (75 percent compared to 51 percent for Angry Birds) while Angry Birds users were more tablet friendly and twice as likely to use a tablet as another user, compared to Words With Friends’ users being half as likely to use a tablet.