“It’s been just a matter of weeks since Steve Jobs announced the impending release of the new Apple iPad tablet,” Paul Carton and Jean Crumrine report for InvestorPlace.
“A ChangeWave survey of 3,171 consumers — conducted in the aftermath of that Apple announcement (Feb. 1-10) — shows a huge wave of pre-launch demand for the iPad and offers key evidence that the Apple tablet will have a major impact on the e-Reader, laptop and home entertainment markets,” Carton and Crumrine report. “Moreover, the survey shows Amazon and its e-Reader competitors are poised to take a big hit early on from the iPad’s entry into their market.”
“Consumer respondents were presented a brief description of key features of the new Apple iPad tablet (scheduled for March 2010 release) and then asked how likely they were to buy one when it becomes available,” Carton and Crumrine report. “Simply put, the current pre-launch demand for the new iPad is greater than the pre-launch demand at a similar point in time for the original iPhone.“
“We took a close-up look at the budding e-Reader market and found the iPad is all but certain to have a transformational impact on it going forward… the survey findings show the iPad is poised to profoundly shake up this market,” Carton and Crumrine report. “Among consumers who already own an eBook Reader, the Amazon Kindle (68%) towers over its closest rival, the Sony Reader (10%). But to gauge the potential impact of the iPad on this market, we asked eBook Reader owners whether they would have purchased their current e-Reader if the Apple iPad had also been available.”
Carton and Crumrine report, “Better than one-in-four (27%) report they’d have bought the Apple iPad [instead of their current e-Reader] if it had been available at the time of purchase.“
“But it’s when we asked consumers about their planned eBook Reader purchases over the next 90 days that the full extent of the Apple iPad’s impact on this marketplace becomes apparent,” Carton and Crumrine report. “The survey shows the Apple iPad is now poised to capture an astonishing 40% of the e-Reader market going forward in the first 90 days after its launch.“
Carton and Crumrine report, “”The survey suggests Amazon and its competitors could well find themselves relegated to playing catch-up within just a few quarters if they don’t preemptively move quickly to upgrade their own e-Readers. In a further warning sign, the survey shows the wave of Apple iPad demand is likely to continue strengthening throughout the first six months after its release. We [also] asked likely buyers which features they were most interested in using: “From the list of possible uses, please tell us which ones you’re most interested in using on the iPad (respondents were allowed to check no more than three choices).”
More details and charts in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we said the minute the iPad was unveiled by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 26, 2010, “Amazon’s Kindle hardware, which wasn’t much to speak of in the first place, is dead.”
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