Half of the consumers in the U.S. and U.K. want an iPad, according to a new survey by Bernstein Research. The other half want a tablet that looks and feels just like it.
Apple still dominates tablet branding with its iPad and iPad 2 devices if the Bernstein Research survey is any indication, leading All Things D to proclaim Monday that, "Consumers don't want tablets, they want iPads."
In both the U.S. and U.K. surveys, 50 percent of respondents said they'd pick an iPad over any other manufacturer's tablet. That left Research in Motion, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, Nokia, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and "no preference" vying for the remaining half of consumers in the two countries.
The dominance of Apple in the tablet market, which All Things D compared to the company's brand supremacy in the MP3 player market with its iPod, may not let up any time soon. Industry researcher Gartner expects Apple to rule the tablet space through at least 2015.
What's more, the survey found that even among respondents who would consider a non-Apple tablet, there's still a preference for tablets with similar specs to those established by Apple with the iPad.
And woe to the would-be Apple competitor which releases a tablet that deviates too far from the Cupertino standards.
"We find that consumers are not interested in form factors that deviate from the benchmark set by Apple," the Bernstein Research report stated. "Few consumers, less than 15 percent prefer the 7-inch screen size versus the 10-inch screen of the iPad.
"Over 50 percent of respondents are firmly in favor of the 10-inch screen, which leads us to conclude that the 7-inch tablet models recently launched, like the BlackBerry PlayBook, are destined for failure. Consumer's preference for the 10-inch form factor explains the lukewarm response to Samsung's 7-inch Galaxy tablet and the rapid introduction of larger screen models in that series."
No non-Apple tablet maker received better than a 13 percent affirmative vote in response to the question, "Which brand do you think you will choose for your tablet." That would be Samsung, which got a 13 percent yea vote from U.K. respondents. Dell was the choice of 12 percent of those surveyed in the U.S., while U.K. respondents also afforded low double-digit figures to the PlayBook and "no preference."
While the iPad had the same 50 percent preference rate in both the U.S. and U.K., respondents from either country differed on which of the other brands was best.
As relatively popular as Samsung was in the U.K., its tablets were the choice of just 7 percent of U.S. respondents. The opposite was true for Dell, which saw its leading non-iPad numbers in the U.S. fall to just a 6 percent preference rate among those surveyed in the U.K.
Motorola was probably the biggest loser in the survey. Though the Xoom arrived to much fanfare earlier this year, just 2 percent of U.S. respondents wanted it and a miniscule 1 percent ticked it off as their fave across the pond. In fact, Motorola was beaten out in the U.S. by Hewlett-Packard, which won't even release its first TouchPad until July 1 but still got a 6 percent preference rate from American respondents.
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