ChangeWave: Shoppers predominantly want Apple’s iPad or Amazon’s Kindle Fire for the holidays

9to5 Staff | Nov 21 2011 - 6:30 am PT

ChangeWave Research in a new survey polled 3,043 consumers on consumer tablet demand for the holidays, including a close-up look at demand for the Amazon Kindle Fire vs. the Apple iPad. Overall, tablets are big this holidays as sales in the United States increase an estimated 130 percent.

Everybody wants a tablet, it seems. A total of 14 percent of respondents plan on buying a tablet in the next 90 days, an eight percentage points increase over an August ChangeWave survey and more than triple the level of a year ago. However, nowadays shoppers no longer have to pick between an iPad or an array of same-looking Android tablets because Amazon is now the second most-popular tablet brand (people clearly want an Amazon tablet).

According to ChangeWave:

The Amazon Kindle Fire is going to leapfrog the competition and become the number two product in the tablet market, as long as it can provide a quality user experience. But the Amazon surge may also contain a silver lining for Apple, by damaging the tablet market hopes of the remaining competitors in the field.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65 percent) plan on buying an iPad, or two out of three tablet buyers. People are loving their iPads and it shows in satisfaction ratings. A total of 74 percent of all iPad owners are Very Satisfied versus 49 percent for all other tablet manufacturers combined. More than one in five, or 22 percent, eye an Amazon tablet and just four percent plan on buying a Galaxy Tab from Samsung. Apple’s score is in line with iPad’s IDC-estimated 68 percent share of the tablet market. In addition, Canalys projected Apple will overtake Hewlett-Packard to become the #1 PC maker globally on the heels of iPad 3 release, although not everybody is down with counting iPad as a computer. More tidbits and charts after the break.

No other manufacturer in the survey garnered more than one percent of future tablet demand. Reports are coming in that white box Android tablets (most of them selling below $100) and branded Android makers face high inventory levels following the holiday season. This might trigger price cuts in the new year that are not expected to affect Apple’s or Amazon’s tablet sales, according to another report from Asia. As for the recently launched $199 Kindle Fire, about two percent respondents in the ChangeWave survey have already pre-ordered their Amazon tablet and five and twelve percent are Very Likely and Somewhat Likely to buy it, respectively. While the launch of the Amazon tablet is a shot across the bow at Apple, Android tablet makers should be worried a lot: Per ChangeWave, the Amazon tablet is “wreaking a devastating blow to a range of second tier tablet manufacturers, including Motorola, RIM, Dell, HTC, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba”.

Cross-posted on 9to5Google.com