Mobile
Tablets Cannibalizing Netbook Demand
According to a recent study released by ChangeWave, the rising popularity of tablets may be eating into demands for low-cost netbooks, with demand for the Apple iPad leading the pack as consumers are eying what to purchase for the holiday shopping season. ChangeWave says, “The decline of netbooks is attributable to a combination of factors including the end of the recession and the mounting penetration of tablet computers — notably the Apple iPad.”
The survey polled 3,108 customers on what they would purchase over the next 90 days and found that only 14 percent of laptop buyers are looking at netbooks, a decline of 10 points from June 2009.
Additionally, from those who are looking at tablet purchases, 80% are eyeing the iPad while the distant second pulled in only 8% of the vote. That spot was held by RIM with its Playbook tablet, which unlike other standalone tablets is meant to be used in conjunction with, or tethered to a BlackBerry smartphone for an optimal experience. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab got 3% of the votes while HP’s Slate 500 managed to swing 2% of the votes.
ChangeWave’s survey was released just following Strategy Analytics released their finding that Apple had managed to capture 95% of the tablet market. The iPad had pretty much gone uncontested for months in the consumer space since being released and Samsung only had begun to ship its Android-based Galaxy Tab recently. The ChangeWave survey also finds that early iPad adopters are very satisfied with their purchase decision with only 1% saying they’re unsatisfied. The device garnered a full 73% “Very Satisfied” rating from surveyed users.
Sascha Pallenberg
11/03/2010 at 3:53 pm
would be interesting to hear from them, while the netbook market is still growing this year from around 35 million units last year to around 40 million this year.
One thing is for sure, you can create quite some buzz for your research group with such an article, especially when you are working for the smaller ones or a group, like ChangingWave, noone heard of before.
I also would have loved to get to know, how many of these 3000 users they asked, already had a netbook, notebook or desktop pc.
Chuong Nguyen
11/03/2010 at 4:24 pm
ChangeWave is actually a growing group in the industry; their reports have shown up on various sites and blogs, but you are right–those factors will be interesting to know, but these statistical reports do vary from one research company to another so I always take them with a grain of salt. Moreover, I don’t know if consumer interest in one product category over another will necessarily translate into sales, but in general I think we can say that there is “interest” in tablets as a mobile computing platform.