26% of Likely Kindle Fire Buyers Delay Buying iPads [Report]

(7:51 am PDT, Nov 9th 2011)

26% of Likely Kindle Fire Buyers Delay Buying iPads [Report]

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After briefly being seen as an ally of Apple’s goal towards crushing Android, Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet is back to threatening iPad sales. A Wall Street analyst now says 26 percent of people considering buying the Fire are putting on hold purchasing the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant’s tablet. What’s more, consumers are more likely to buy the Amazon tablet than the iPad.

RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky took a look at a recent ChangeWave survey of early adopters, finding 5 percent of the 2,600 consumers had either already ordered a Kindle Fire or were “very likely” to buy one. That compares to 4 percent of buyers who said they were “very likely” to get an iPad.

Okay, a 1 percent difference doesn’t translate to an avalanche of sales for the Amazon tablet, but the analyst looked
deeper, finding of that “very likely” group 26 percent plan to delay or shelve plans to buy an iPad. Of course, this is all based on the previews of the Fire, since the device doesn’t actually go on sale until later in November.

Which is why positive ‘buzz’ around the Fire will be so important. “Sustained Fire uptake and ‘buzz’ will depend on consumer /reviewer reactions to the Fire experience,” notes Abramsky. So far, all we have to go on is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ statement that the company is making more units to meet unexpected demand. Earlier this month, we reported on a leak suggesting Amazon is pre-selling 50,000 tablets per day ahead of the Nov. 15 release date.

One unknown is how the recently-unveiled Nook Tablet will impact both the Fire and the iPad. The new device boasts a 7-inch screen, Android “Gingerbread” 2.3 OS, 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal memory and a 11.5-hour battery life. Despite the impressive hardware, early reviews say that the iPad 2 and the Fire have little to worry about — for now.

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  • http://profiles.google.com/the1aboveall James Padilla

    Doesn’t surprise me one bit.  People are a budget, they want something $ friendly and gets the job done.  They may not need all the bells and whistles the iPad can bring.  I see the Kindle Fire doing quiet well.  On the bus and train all I see are Kindles, Kobos, Nooks and other E-readers.  Once in a while someone will pull out an iPad but they usually put it back soon after because it is heavy after a while.  I hope the Fire does sells great.

  • Anonymous

    I would be more impressed/concerned about this if it was a better survey. They only talked to 2600  people. So every % they are talking about is less than what one store sells in iPads in like an day during launch or a week in a ‘dead’ time. Doesn’t really fit the implied doom and gloom of the headline. 

    I hope that the Fire does well but not because I think it will ever be an iPad killer. It likely won’t. Neither will the Nook. Because they are going for a different audience. One that hasn’t bought an iPad and probably never would have due to it being ‘too much’. The iPad is likely to keep selling as strong as it has but they will lose market share because of the total users going up. 

    And we’ll see if that leak about Amazon’s sales was correct and if it stayed as high as the blogs suggest, but I suspect no. After those initial 3-4 days it was probably more like 1/10th that amount per day. Which isn’t shabby if all the orders are completed and not returned a week later

    • John Mozelewski

      i guess im odd one im concidering selling my ipad for one of these if i can get ice cream sandwich on it and it rooted

  • Majipoor

    What was the reason for not buying an iPad before? Price, size/weight, don’t like Apple. 

    What is the reason for not buying an iPad or a Fire now? Good question: good luck to all other competitors.

  • John Mozelewski

    I have an ipad 2 but if kindle fire gets rooted and ics before i get ios 5 jailbreak then ill be selling my ipad 2. tired of boring look of my ipad. my droid x looks like an iphone and i want my ipad to look like android:) i know many of you will say its stupid but i think its fun to mess around with

    • Anonymous

      It is not stupid it’s whatever is good for you man. You are better than the Android fans that belittle iOS users on other blogs. When it comes to a phone I want something that works, I don’t have time to tweak the hell out of it, I jailbroke for years and I tweaked and tweaked now I am sick of tweaking. If that is your thing great, no need to belittle people over what I or you like. 

  • Anonymous

    I hate reports like this.BGR are king of empty reports like this. If you look at the chart it measures 2010 demand of the original iPad. It was a new market product that had strong demand, but how many die-hard Apple fans continue to refuse to purchase one since the reveal because it was iOS and not OS X tablet? Plenty,they rather have a MacBook Air. Of course the super die-hard Apple fans where the early adopters but that spread. The demand for the iPad 2 was far greater than the iPad 1 and I would expect the iPad 3′s demand to match the iPad 2′s if not top it. 

  • Anonymous

    In the US only, kindle fire can’t be bought outside the US at the moment as I believe it uses amazons premium subscription service for everything. I’m more likely to get a nook, as running android it can run the kindle app, and read all my epubs that I already have with other readers too. Also in 10 years I know i’ll still be able to open my epubs, but I can’t say the same for the kindle files.
    Actually, this was one of the main reasons for springing for the iPad, is iBooks is a great reader, I just mail myself the books, and open in iBooks. It even synchs where I am up to like kindle does, and I can read on my phone or iPad.
    If kindle could support epubs, I’d be more interested, otherwise it’s like a media player that can’t play mp3. Useless.

    • Anonymous

      Oh, and the books are so small I just keep a folder of them in my gmail account. If its not there, I fire up calibre on my Mac with an email that is picked up by an AppleScript action and download from the web interface it presents.

About the author

Ed SutherlandEd Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who covers the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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