A recent survey by Kantar Worldpanel concluded that 10% of American consumers over the age of 16 own a tablet of some kind. Of course, the iPad accounts for about two thirds of that, but over the last six months, iPad’s share of sales has shrunk to 50%. As a case in point, 10% of respondents said they were planning on picking up the Amazon Kindle Fire in the next year. According to the research, 72% of iPhone owners intended to buy an iPad, meanwhile other research has indicated that those using other smartphone platforms aren’t quite as loyal. There’s also a bit of potential cannibalization across smartphones and tablets; 8% of respondents weren’t sure if they were going to be a smartphone or a tablet. Finally, over a third of tablet shoppers claimed to have a high level of knowledge, versus only 3% who said their familiarity with tablets was low.
It’s interesting to see iPad’s iron grip on the tablet market starting to slip, but they’ve got such a head start on the competition, that I think we’ll be well into 2012 before the Android alternatives start posing any serious threat. I’m particularly curious to see how well Windows 8 fares on tablets, especially if it can deliver a desktop-ish experience, as opposed to a smartphone-ish one. Quick show of hands, how many of y’all have a tablet? How many are holding out, and why?
[via cellular-news]