Study suggests consumers are clamoring for an Amazon tablet – if it’s cheap

By on Jul 26, 2011 at 3:20 PM
Tablets July 26, 2011

It could very well be that Android’s best hope for a competitive tablet offering in the near term lies in Amazon’s hands. Retrevo Labs, a division of consumer electronics shopping site Retrevo, surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. consumers in June to find out what people are looking for in a tablet. While 50% of those surveyed who intended to purchase a tablet this year said it would be an iPad, Retrevo determined that the most important feature to prospective tablet buyers is a low price point. Considering the unlikelihood of Apple budging when it comes to price, Android tablets have a clear opportunity to attack the market at more affordable price points. Among those brands that respondents would seriously consider buying a tablet from excluding Apple, Amazon was given the nod by 55% of those surveyed, followed by Samsung and Dell at 38% each. BGR reported exclusively that Amazon is working on two tablets it hopes to launch in 2011, a dual-core slate codenamed “Coyote” and a quad-core beast codenamed “Hollywood.” And as we discussed in a recent podcast, we think Amazon has the best chance to make some serious waves in the still-emerging tablet space. Amazon has several content ecosystems that will be at the core of its tablet offering such as the Kindle eBook store, a streaming movie service, its cloud locker service for streaming music and, of course, the Amazon Appstore. If deeply integrated into a customized Android build, these content channels could combine to produce a rich, comprehensive tablet experience. Additional graphs from Retrevo’s study follow below.

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  • jay_max

    Amazon is in the best position of anyone to give Apple a run for its money.  And given its sudden litigiousness with Amazon, I think Apple realizes this.

    • Anonymous

      +1

    • http://www.facebook.com/applelover Tim Meesseman

      Agreed, but if Amazon ever wants to see Apple status, they need to sell their product in B&M stores. The online-only tactic will only get you so far. They’ve made good headway with getting the Kindle into stores, so I guess they realize this already. But they need to FLOOD stores with it. Nowadays, you can’t go anywhere without seeing an iPad on display.

    • http://twitter.com/snookasnoo Idon’t Know

      What “litigiousness”?  There are no lawsuits or even threats of one between Amazon and Apple.
      An Amazon tablet that forks Android does Google no good at all.  It will not use Google services but will use Googles IP for free.  Just like the Chinese Baidu phones that Google falsely counts as activation’s.  Of course googles counts upgrades and everything else they can think of as activations so their numbers are highly suspect anyway.
      We will have to see what the Amazon tablet is.  If it is a full fledged tablet they would have to allow apps from other book stores for Nook etc.  I’m betting Amazon has zero desire to do this and will actively prevent this.
      It will almost certainly be a low cost tablet with the primary goal being provide Kindle reading and buying.  Given the many compromises Amazon is likely to make for cost reasons and to shut out competitors this is more likely to be an upgrade to the eReader Kindle and less of an overall tablet.

      • Beef

        Except for when Apple sued Amazon for using “Appstore” in the name of its on-device Android software market.

  • Anonymous

    Considering Amazon is the only one in the list of choices that hasn’t already produced an Android tablet, isn’t that the default choice? I mean, we’ve already seen the best effort from the rest so obviously Amazon is the last great hope Android tablets.

    • http://twitter.com/snookasnoo Idon’t Know

      Then Android is in trouble.  Amazon is not going to make a $500 tablet like the Samsung Galaxy etc that have done so poorly in the marketplace.

    • Anonymous

      The NookColor has been doing fairly well for an wild-card Android tablet. And when the poll shows people will buy if it’s under $250, the NookColor just eeks under that wire.

  • Anonymous

    Those choices stink.  Where is Asus?  or HTC?   Bad survey

    • http://twitter.com/snookasnoo Idon’t Know

      The Asus and HTC tablets are gathering dust in stores along with all the other Android tablets.  Already in the bargain bin all of them.

      • http://twitter.com/cdoruff Collin Doruff

        Uh, no? Not from what I see in stores. I see them sold out.

  • http://www.facebook.com/applelover Tim Meesseman

    Do you hate paragraphs, BGR?

    • http://twitter.com/juvus juvus

      lol

  • http://www.facebook.com/applelover Tim Meesseman

    Who was actually surveyed? 1000 people isn’t a very good sample size. The results could easily be skewed in either direction if the study was done on a particular website or in a particular store.

  • SuperMax

    “Would you consider buying an Android tablet with similar features over a base model $499 iPad?”

    Where are these $250, $300, and $400 Android tablets that can compete with a $499 iPad?

    • Anonymous

      Loosely, Nook Color, Transformer, Iconia, no?

  • http://twitter.com/verythrax verythrax

    Funny thing is Barnes and Noble being at only 21%, considering they have very good options so far, I would consider them more likely to delivery something good..

    But anyway, 79% of the market would buy one only at $250 or less. It says it all.

    • Anonymous

      Exactly, Nook Color would win handily here since that’s the very metric $79 is looking for as the tipping factor.

  • Anonymous

    Barnes and Nobel sold 3.3 million Nook Colors in the first quarter of 2011 and it isn’t even a full Android tablet out of the box–and you can only put the phone version on it (3.1 works poorly).  That proves to me that a 7″ $250 Android tablet with the Amazon name will sell well. 

  • SetApart4Christ

    Interesting how Asus, who has IMO the best Android tablet on the market right now is not even included.

    • Mac

      When will people and Google realize that all android tablets suck donkey balls and just shut the whole thing down? It would be the right thing to do. IPad rules!!!!!!!

      • Anonymous

        Competition drives innovation. Don’t go around making big decisions for companies any time soon.

  • Ewgwegweg

    yo
    fuck you, bgr

    • Mac

      yo
      fuck you, Mac.

  • Anonymous

    If that HTC “Puccini” has wifi only and is $500 or less, then Amazon can suck it.

  • joey

    what is going on with Galaxy Tab ? i go into best buy, staples…..and they are all out of stock. 

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/PACMan3000/ Paul A. Chapel

    Even though Retrovo is quite crap when it comes to surveys, this idea does jive with what I’ve been saying about Android from the beginning. Android is not selling because it’s better, it’s selling because it’s either cheap or free, which explains why Android has had so much success in the smartphone market, but not the tablet market.

    It’s not so easy to give away free Tablets by subsidizing the price through a service contract. People are willing to get a service contract with a phone, because they feel it’s a necessity, but not so with a Tablet. So the Android manufacturers are without their major weapon that they’ve used so well in the smartphone market, a quick and easy way to flood the Tablet market with (almost) free Android devices.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_DIJC7QCUMXJPENMCV3FSL7JP6I Jana Guerrero

    I just paid $22.87 for an iPad2-64GB and my girlfriend loves her Panasonic Lumix GF 1 Camera that we got for $38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS. I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $675 which only cost me $62.81 to buy. Here is the website we use to get it all from, MetaCent. com

  • Applesucksfatties

    i’m not a market research guru but don’t the manufacturer numbers have to add up to 100%?

    • Anonymous

      Oh. I thought you might be a guru, what with the professional sounding username and all.

      But no, respondents could select more than one so they need not sum to 100.

      • Anonymous

        Lol

      • Applesucksfatties

        hey George Michael…thanks for the answer (and the not-so-smart ass comment).  Personally, I think the credibility of the finding would have been much higher in my book if they would have made every respondent list their top choice for a tablet manufacturer.  That way, someone can look at it and say “50% are iSheep that are gonna buy the iMaxi, the other 50% are broken down as follows xx% RIM, xx% Samsung, etc.  

      • Anonymous

        OK, thanks for the input. Who is Geroge Michael?

  • CMC

    Just don’t know that Amazon can be trusted.  They DID remotely delete content from people’s devices without their prior knowledge.  They DO have the technology to do it.  They DID it. They CAN do it again any time they wish.  Just sayin…

  • Smartypants0319

    I think that if they keep the price at a cheaper point than apple, and bundle their slate with an amazon prime membership, they’re really gonna kick some ass out there. They tightly integrate their file storage, instant movie Netflix like thing, and app store and all that and they’ll have one hell of a machine on their hands. They’ve really built up quite an arsenal to equip this thing with that no other company could even come close matching. Plus with free prime shipping, its almost like a $70+ coupon (for those of us who pay for prime already)

  • TooMuchNoise

     Where are the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Safeway, and Pottery Barn tablets? I heard PbOs 2.3  “CrockPot” (Pottery Barn OS which is based off Linux) is awesome! Way better than PbOs 2.2.3 “LinenCloset” which didn’t do cut ‘n’ paste.

  • TooMuchNoise

     Where are the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Safeway, and Pottery Barn tablets? I heard PbOs 2.3  “CrockPot” (Pottery Barn OS which is based off Linux) is awesome! Way better than PbOs 2.2.3 “LinenCloset” which didn’t do cut ‘n’ paste.

  • TooMuchNoise

     Where are the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Safeway, and Pottery Barn tablets? I heard PbOs 2.3  “CrockPot” (Pottery Barn OS which is based off Linux) is awesome! Way better than PbOs 2.2.3 “LinenCloset” which didn’t do cut ‘n’ paste.

  • TooMuchNoise

     Where are the Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Safeway, and Pottery Barn tablets? I heard PbOs 2.3  “CrockPot” (Pottery Barn OS which is based off Linux) is awesome! Way better than PbOs 2.2.3 “LinenCloset” which didn’t do cut ‘n’ paste.

  • Phed_Up

    Amazon could really make some serious inroads into the tablet market, but reports I have seen show their tablet offerings without camera/cameras.  This would be a HUGE mistake in my opinion.

    They will sell a lot as “Amazon media consumption devices” but they would sell a multitude more if they were truly “everyday” tablet contenders.

  • http://www.twitter.com/dannydefinit DannyDefinit

    I’m looking forward to the Amazon tablets, but I hope they do price them right. I remember buying the original Kindle DX as a father’s day gift for $489. Way too steep for even early adopters.

  • Anonymous

    Why would I want a Amazon tablet? I can buy the Galaxy Tablet for 16GB 499$ same price as the 16GB Ipad 2. Or buy a cheaper model like the VIZIO tablet 349$(not release yet) or the Acer tablet  398.00.

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