Given the amount of data available everywhere today, Data Analytics tools are increasingly growing in importance. Among these tools, the 5 tools that are arguably the most popular are: Excel, Python, Tableau, R and Power BI. While each tool is considerably popular on its own, presented here is an analysis of who is potentially the biggest competitor and poses the most threat to each of these 5 tools in the US market. Users might often be found pondering over which among any given Data Analytics tools to use for performing a certain job. This very aspect of users' behavior of comparing say, 'Tableau vs Power BI' has been analyzed over the period of 4 years starting 2016, in an attempt to identify which tools are vying for the same user attention.
Figure 1: Data Source: Google Trends
Of the 5 Data Analytics tools considered, when US users' Google searches comparing Excel with the other 4 Data Analytics tools are plotted, an interesting point observed is that users are increasingly comparing Excel with Python. What is also observed is that for the 4-year period considered, in the first 2 years i.e. 2016 and 2017, Excel had been compared the most with R, Python, Tableau and then Power BI in that order. For the next 2 years i.e. 2018 and 2019, however, Excel has been compared the most with Python, R, Tableau and then Power BI in that order. So, while R was Excel's biggest competitor in 2016 and 2017; more recently, in 2018 and 2019, Python has taken the place of being Excel's biggest competitor in the US. So, currently, it can be evidently said that Python has emerged as Excel's main competitor in the US Data Analytics Tools' market.
Figure 2: Data Source: Google Trends
For Python as a Data Analytics tool, for each year in the 4-year period considered, its comparison has been done the most with R by users in the United States leading to it claiming the numero uno position among all the data analytics tools considered to be potential competitors of Python. After R, the next most compared tool with Python is Excel. However, the comparisons of 'Python vs Excel' made by users aren't even half of the 'Python vs R' comparisons made by users in the US. So, R has risen as the biggest competitor of Python by a huge margin. Thus, for each of the 4 years (i.e. from 2016 to 2019), Python has been compared the most with R, Excel, Tableau and then Power BI in that order. Although comparisons with Tableau and Power BI are comparatively very less, they have steadily risen a little every year since 2016.
Figure 3: Data Source: Google Trends
When Tableau's comparison with the other 4 tools by US's users is evaluated, an obvious observation seen via the graphical representation is that for each of the 4 years considered, Tableau is most often compared with Power BI followed by Excel. However, while comparisons with Power BI grew over the years, that with Excel remained more or less, steady. Besides, Tableau is alternately (over the period of 4 years) compared least with Python and R. So, the biggest competitor for Tableau is undoubtedly Power BI in the US.
Figure 4: Data Source: Google Trends
The data of comparisons of R made with the remaining 4 tools by users in the US have confirmed that Python acts as the biggest threat to the popularity of R in US's market of Data Analytics tools. No other tool poses even half the competition to R that Python poses to it. Still, the second competitor in each of the 4 years is Excel and the third competitor is Tableau. Quite interestingly, Power BI is seldom, if at all, compared with R.
Figure 5: Data Source: Google Trends
The Power BI tool for Data Analytics has been compared the most with Tableau in the US. In fact, Tableau is the most major competitor of Power BI and neither of the other 3 tools that are compared follow even closely. Still, the 2nd most compared tool with Power BI after Tableau is Excel followed by Python. R's comparison with Power BI is almost negligible.
In conclusion, it is observed that Python and R programming language are each other's biggest competitors while Tableau and Power BI are battling for the same customer segments. The biggest threat to Excel's popularity was R until a few years ago, but is currently Python.
