Back in May, Apple’s iPad regained its illustrious titles as the top tablet according to the J.D. Power’s U.S. Tablet Satisfaction survey.
Fast forward five months, and Apple’s lost the title… to Amazon, of all companies. Is this even real life?
Here’s how the votes played out. In a survey of consumer satisfaction amongst nearly 2,700 U.S. tablet owners running from March to August, the iPad placed second place with a score of 824 out of a possible 1,000. Samsung came in at 821 for third, with Asus and Acer coming in fourth and fifth, respectively. But Amazon’s Kindle tablets beat everyone, taking home a score of 827 out of 1,000.
According to J.D. Power, Apple received high scores in performance and styling and design, while Amazon performed best in ease of operation and cost. That makes some degree of sense: not only are Amazon’s Kindle tablets several hundreds of dollars cheaper than the iPad, but features like Amazon’s Mayday make it painless for customers to video chat with support reps to get a one-on-one coaching session on how to use their tablet.
Something tells me there’s another factor at play here too, though: during J.D. Power’s latest ranking period, there were a number of new Kindle Fires announced, but no new iPads. Perhaps people gave a slightly better ranking to tablets that had debuted more recently?
If so, don’t be surprised to see the iPad jump back to first place next time J.D. Power releases their U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Survey. We all know the iPad is the best tablet out there; it’s taken the crown before, and it can take it again.
Source: Macworld
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
12 responses to “Apple loses title of best tablet maker to Amazon in latest J.D. Power rankings”
Amazon’s Mayday seems like a very useful thing for customers so I have to go along with that however, when prices are involved in a rating there’s always some cheapness factor that weighs heavily. Three points is a pretty close call. Does a cheaper tablet make it a better tablet or just a more affordable tablet. If company sells a tablet below cost and doing so isn’t sustainable in the long run then there could be a problem with that in the future. Anyway, good for Amazon, it needs all the support it can get. It’s a great service as far as I’m concerned and I hope they’re around for a long time. I do find it surprising when a company that doesn’t specifically make hardware beats a true hardware company with a device but there isn’t much of a guarantee that it will happen year after year.
i agree with aapl_@.. Let the chips fall where they may.
JDPA threw Amazon a bone. Who is JDPA anyway, and why do they matter?
Was it last year when they picked Samsung’s tablet as the best – and Samsung tablet lost out on every category except price to the iPad.
So I am not surprise whom they pick and doesn’t matter anymore when their survey result is questionable.
Uhmazon.
JDP just lost it’s last shred of credibility. They hit rock bottom whereas even consumer reports has stopped foolishly bashing Apple over non-existent (antennae gate, really) non-issues. Did JDP rate the Fire phone (or whatever it was called–more like Amazon Flop phone as they sold like a dozen of them) as a top phone, too?
Translation: Amazon, the choice for cheap simpletons.
three point difference and given the millions of iPads out there, not to mention other tablets, that sample size could be a joke. And how were they gathered for this survey. the methodology says much.
JD Powers reminds me of a Republican Congressman, who used to be a used car salesman: greasy, tells you what he thinks you want to hear, is available for any price, and will change his mind at the drop of a nickel.
iPads are not tablets. They are simply large iPhones. They don’t have any different function than an iPhone. On the other hand, Samsung’s tablets actually do have functions beyond a smartphone. iPads are simply squares on a screen. No split screen, no widgets. It may be the most basic tablet. It might be the easiest to use, but when all you have are squares on a screen, what would one expect? If Apple had given the iPad some utility to differentiate it from an iPhone, it might be in the running. ‘Til then, it’s just a large iPhone. That’s not a bad thing.
lol. all fortune 500 companies disagree. Microsoft releases their most polished Office suite for only the iPad which has almost a million custom apps for that screen size.
There are a few thousand in comparison for any android tablets.
Android is for phones. Android on tablets = portable TVs.
Cut Amazon some slack. They are the only company daring enough to try to escape from the closed android OS that google continues to put barriers around. If any OEM even dares to develop a competing API for android they are kicked out of the alliance and lose all access to google api’s.
(e.g. if you develop a map service, you lose access to gmail/search/now/translate/everything).