After the iPad, the Kindle Fire is the clear second choice
Amazon.com's Kindle Fire tablet will leapfrog most tablet offerings to quickly become Number 2 in the market behind Apple's iPad, according to a survey conducted by ChangeWave Research. The November survey of 3,043 consumers in North America found that 65 percent plan to buy an iPad tablet, while 22 percnt said they planned to buy a Kindle Fire media tablet.
Amazon's Kindle Fire is "wreaking a devastating blow" to the second tier of tablet manufacturers, ChangeWave said in a statement.
Only 4 percent are planning to purchase a Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet, which comes in several sizes, according to ChangeWave. Each of the other tablet manufacturers were preferred by 1 percent or less interest of the respondents. The manufacturers of those devices include Motorola, Research in Motion, Dell, HTC, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba. The ChangeWave results didn't mention the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet that started shipping last week -- just after the Kindle Fire became available.
A key reason for iPad's market dominance is a high customer satisfaction rating, where 74 percent said they are "very satisfied" with the Apple device, ChangeWave noted. By comparison, other tablets combined got a 49 percent satisfaction rating.
The ChangeWave results are strikingly different than those from a Retrevo survey of more than 1,000 Americans. That survey, released earlier this month, found that 44 percent of respondents were considering the $199, 7-inch Kindle Fire, far more than the 12 percent that said they would first consider the cheapest 9.7-inch iPad 2, which costs $499.
Forrester Research has projected that Kindle Fire sales could reach 5 million, and that the Nook Tablet could reach 2 million by year's end. Apple sold 11.1 million iPads in the third quarter -- a record, Forrester added.
(Source: infoworld.com)
