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.
