Usually, where there’s smoke, there’s fire — except in the case of the iPad. Wealthy consumers are overwhelmingly opting for the Apple tablet, despite Amazon’s recent introduction of the Kindle Fire, a $199 alternative to the pricier iPad, indicates a survey of preferences based on income levels. More than 9 out of 10 tablet buyers with incomes above $100,000 prefer the Apple device, according to the figures.
The survey, appearing on the “opinion-based community” SodaHead.com, asked consumers’ tablet preference based on their income level. Apple’s iPad had a 73 percent preference over the Fire’s 27 percent in the $25,000 per year income bracket. The iPad held an even more dominant position when U.S. incomes were above $100,000: the Apple tablet was preferred by 94 percent of users surveyed versus just 6 percent for the new Kindle tablet. (Too bad this economic category comprises few tablet sales.)
However, the Kindle Fire appears to have its best chance of competing with the iPad in the middle-income bracket earning between $25,000 and $100,000. There, the Apple device was preferred by 54 percent of those surveyed, versus 46 percent for the Amazon device.
It’s also worth noting that our own investigation found that despite what SodaHead.com’s statistics say, the Kindle Fire is on track to be the best selling tablet launch in history, beating the iPad and iPad 2’s numbers.
Even so, the survey findings seem to indicate Apple maintains its status among wealthy U.S. consumers and its attractiveness for younger consumers, likely to just be starting their working life. It is the middle-class where Amazon should find its ripest audience, the segment that cares most about cost.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
25 responses to “Apple iPad is Kindle ‘Fire-Proof’ [Survey]”
Something I was thinking about when it comes to the pre-orders. There are no Amazon physical locations, if you want the Fire, you have to get it online through Amazon. There is no benefit to waiting until launch day for such a paradigm. With Apple, you can order online, both pre-order and day of, or you can go to one of many retail chains. So while pre-orders represent a statistically small number of Apple’s launch sales, the pre-orders likely will represent a large number of Amazon’s since there is little incentive in waiting since the earlier you order something online the earlier you can get it.
Many people who preordered used the shipping option and actually got their iDevice a day early.
Except hotly anticipated Apple products sell out on launch day at retail. There is a huge incentive to pre-order, you’ll actually get one that day.
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I do not accept the basic premise of the article. The upper income consumer may very well purchase a Amazon tablet as well. The $200 price for acquisition does not give someone a second thought to purchase. As for the Apple store, I own a reasonable number of Apple products and never went to an Apple store when the option of point, click and having it delivered to my door is available. I suspect income and AGE are both factors. 6 months from now I suspect you will find more consumers use the Amazon Fire when mobile than the I-Pad. Frankly when I travel I take the smallest device I own. Let’s see how all this plays out but IMO the 7″ Fire will be highly successful
I still think the Kindle Fire is the device that every parents buys for their kids, but only disappoints them in the end, because their friends got an iPad…
It happend to the iPod that way.. you couldn’t show up with your iRiver when all the cool guys had an iPad. And since ‘normal’ people are calling tablets iPads already, somethings tells me this is going to same way….
Yeah because we all know Cult of Mac would never post unscientific surveys that are biased towards Apple or anything… C’mon you’ve been trying to brainwash people for almost a year now that the iPhone is dominating the smart phone market and the numbers released yesterday by a proven company show completely otherwise, Android is kicking Apple in the butt.
btw you can’t use an ipad with one hand. You’ll be able to with the Fire. Many people understate the value of having an ergonomic device that is easy to hold and use for long periods of time. The iPad is too wide, and bulky to be able to do such things.
Isn’t this a bit premature? Shouldn’t we wait until someone has actually–what’s the word?–used the new Kindle before we figure out who’s buying what?
You can buy Kindle devices at Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Radio Shack and other retail establishments in the United States. Since that has been their primary market to date, they seem covered with over 10,000 retail locations.
Before you think of getting a Kindle twinkle …err…Fire, here’s some limitations of it that you need to consider:
– Kindle Fire doesn’t have microSD slot that, for example, Nook Color has thus it is stuck with 6 GB usable internal storage unlike Nook Color that can get up to 32 GB card in. Kindles are made to be almost like a “dumb terminal” of the past to make sure you’re tied up to Amazon’s storage on the web (for which you need Wi-Fi connection to get to) and you can only store content you get from Amazon there, not other files. Quoting Amazon on Kindle Fire: “Free cloud storage for all Amazon content”. Get it, Amazon content?
– The stats of how long the battery can last (Kindle Fire theory is 8 hours) are taken with Wi-Fi off. You can only imaging how much less Kindle Fire battery will last if you use it to access content from their Cloud storage over Wi-Fi.
– Amazon can spy on your web activity through their new cloud-integrated web browser of Kindle Fire.
– VERY IMPORTANT – lack of microSD slot means that if you decide to root your Kindle Fire, you’ll have to root the actual device thus there will be no coming back. On Nook Color, you can make it boot from a “rooted” microSD card and if you want to get back to the original Nook you can just take out the card and reboot.
– Kindle doesn’t support eBooks in ePub format that is the most used format in the world.
– Kindle app store contains only Amazon approved apps and it does not include (and will not include) Netflix app that iPad has and Nook Color is getting thus again you’re stuck with Amazon content only.
– Amazon confirmed that you cannot download anything to Kindle Fire when traveling abroad.
I’d recommend waiting for a couple of weeks as Nook Color 2 is rumored to be released by Barnes & Noble.
Basically, the kindle fire is less an attempt to compete with the iPad, than it is an attempt to regain momentum in the e reader space… In case you missed it, Barnes and Noble’s nooks have been outselling kindles for the last year, the nook simple touch was (and still is) a better device than the equivalent kindle touch… And it has been selling as the best e ink
E reader in the market for months now, so kindle is only playing catchup… Even the lower price tag on the kindle touch is for an *advertisement supplemented* version of the device, something amazon neglected to
mention when they were hyping up
their new cheaper devices… The ads free version of the device costs the same as a nook simple touch and it’s a poorer device, has no button page turns, touch only, and screen contrast is lower… Likewise, the nook color (which has virtually the same specs as the fire except for a slightly slower processor) has been on sale for about a year and a half now, allows users to 1. add a micro SD card (increasing memory from 8 gb built in to 40 gb on the drive) where the kindle fire only has the 8 gb storage and no SD, opting instead to require users to store all amazon purchased only content on their cloud servers…. Newsflash: the Barnes and Noble Nook Color also has all of your purchased content stored in your account on at BN.com… So I fail to see how having “cloud” storage is a substitute for a memory card, especially when the device only has wifi… Basically any time you are away from a wifi connection you cannot access your content… Given that a movie takes up about 850gb or more, you will only be able to store about 6 or 7 movies plus sone books, and some music before you need to find a wifi connection and wait to download other content which you’ve already purchased! :P…. On top of this, the nook color can read any ePUB format e books you purchased from elsewhere, you are not locked into buying content from Barnes and Noble… What’s more: with an SD slot, you can buy a N2E SD card that has been pre installed with a second android honeycomb operating system, and when you boot up your nook color, you are given an option to run either the nook native android OS, or android honeycomb, which turns the nook color into a full fledged android tablet with access to the entire android app store, including things like Netflix, for streaming movies, and the kindle app so the nook color can even read kindle ebooks as well, selling for $250 ads free… This is why over the last year, the nook color has in fact been the #1 selling android tablet device, and basically the #2 tablet overall other than the iPad… Amazon is basically just playing catch up, and after a year and a half of development, the fire honestly is underwhelming… I would still prefer to have the last generation of nook tablet that has been around for a year and a half already… The nook also has the benefit of in store access to service, cooler designed accessories and covers, etc. and when in a barnes and noble store, it gives occasional special offers at the cafe, and you can read any ebook in store for free, for an hour each day… The next day you go there again and the book opens at the place you left off…
It fascinates me that the $25,000 and under demo prefers Apple, but doesn’t surprise me. Apple is a status symbol and low income people will sometimes live beyond their means to acquire status devices. It’s often to poor people’s detriment to have that attitude because they’d be better off saving money on non-essentials if they wish to break out of poverty. The middle class figured that one out, their thrift and savings-orientation may be what helped them get out of poverty and into the middle class and being able to stay in that status. They don’t “need” an iPad to the point of parting with $600 for it, even if they might admire it. With people over $100K, they probably figure they don’t have to worry about cost. Tablets are toys, no matter who makes them or how “killer” the apps are (plus a lot of apps can be used just fine on a phone).
To be sincere I would never spent my money in things like an ipad or kindle. I don’t see the point really. I remember my sister getting one iPad from free-apple-ipad.com , and suggesting me to do the same. All I said was ” If I haven’t buy one yet, what makes you thing that I could take it for free?” , please these days just want to be living by appearances.