Apple's iPad remains dominant

NEW YORK: Apple's iPad looks set to retain its dominant position in the North American tablet market, as consumer interest in Amazon's Kindle Fire wavers, a study has revealed.

ChangeWave, the research group, polled 2,893 adults in North America, and found only 7% of respondents intended to buy a slate in the next 90 days.

The organisation suggested that such a moderation in demand was to be expected after the holiday season and the roll out of the most recent version of the iPad in March 2012.

When discussing which appliances they were likely to acquire, some 73% of interested interviewees named Apple's iPad, mirroring the lead role the device has enjoyed since its launch.

Amazon's Kindle Fire was in second place here, posting just 8% overall. This figure stood at 22% in November 2011, but had decreased to 7% in March, coinciding with the introduction of the latest iPad.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab, by contrast, has doubled its share of planned purchases, now taking a 6% share on this measure.

These results were broadly reflected when it came to customer feedback, with 81% of people possessing the third generation iPad proving "very satisfied" with the device, as were 71% of earlier iPad users.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab lodged 46% on this metric, while Amazon's Kindle Fire yielded 41%, a total that had declined by 15 percentage points from the last research round.

A small majority (53%) of Kindle Fire owners were "somewhat satisfied", but this was also the only featured gadget to have buyers who described themselves as "very unsatisfied", on 3%.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab recorded 41% for customers who were "somewhat satisfied", and the highest number of "somewhat unsatisfied" users, on 11%.

As some analysts predict Apple will soon launch a 7-inch "mini-iPad", ChangeWave also asked if contributors anticipated purchasing one for themselves or someone else, with 3% "very" likely to and 14% "somewhat" likely.

"At the moment, the greatest competitive threat to the new iPad could well be the iPad Mini - which doesn't exist yet, but even if it ever does, it too will be made by Apple," Paul Carton, ChangeWave's VP, research, said.

Data sourced from ChangeWave; additional content by Warc staff, 7 June 2012

SIMILAR NEWS