ChangeWave: “…diminishing strength of Amazon within the tablet market”
ChangeWave is a legitimate polling company, and I’ve reported on their results before.
Well, their
is not good for the Kindle Fire.
I should be clear that the above link isn’t the full report, but is essentially their “executive summary” with graphs and tables.
I don’t want to take too much away from them, and I recommend that you look at it.
Bottom line: people are less likely to buy a Fire in the future than they were before, and the people who have one are not as “very satisfied” as people who have an iPad.
iPad 3 owners are reported to be 81% very satisfied…which is very high. The Kindle Fire is tied at the bottom of the few they list (with “other tablet devices”) at 41%.
Interestingly, if we look at “somewhat satisfied”, the Kindle Fire is way ahead. Combining the two, it’s quite competitive…within a couple of points.
However, the Kindle Fire also is the only model with a “very unsatisfied” higher than 0%…and it’s at 3%, which is also quite high.
This is not a good predictor of future sales.
I want to give you a chance to express your opinion:
I may add to this, but I want to give you some time to do these polls before I weigh in on how I feel about it.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
June 6, 2012 at 2:12 am |
I belong to three Kindle Groups, one dedicated to the Fire. It continues to amuse me how people complain about what the Fire can’t/won’t do. It’s an E-Reader, for pete’s sake, with some enhancements such as wi-fi abilities, app download etc. It’s NOT a full fledged, full power computer yet people try to tweak it into doing things that I truely don’t think it was meant to do. The iPad is an animal of another stripe. More powerful, more “computer like” and far less a reader and vehicle by which we can carry hundreds of books with us. I fully believe that those who say they are disappointed with the Fire are people who wanted an iPad and it’s capabilities but didn’t want to pay the price. They are trying to make the Kindle into something else whereas I love it just the way it is…well a reflective screen would be nice LOL!!
June 6, 2012 at 1:59 pm |
Thanks for writing, SandyO!
I have to say, that’s an interesting perspective and one that varies from mine.
I don’t think of a Kindle Fire as being like, say, a netbook, certainly. However, I also don’t think of it as primarily an EBR (E-Book Reader). Yes, you can read books on it (and I do), but I think of it as much more about video, apps, and web-browsing. We already had the RSKs (Reflective Screen Kindles) which could carry hundreds of books (although I only keep about ten Kindle store books on any of my devices at a given time).
I call the Kindle Fire an “entertablet”…a tablet geared towards entertainment, towards media consumption rather than creation.
Comparing it to a netbook overestimates.For me, comparing it to an EBR is too narrow.
I was saying ahead of time that I hoped they didn’t name an Amazon tablet a “Kindle”: I wanted that reserved for RSKs.
There’s nothing wrong with reading on a Fire, naturally, as I’ve said, I was surprised that it has become my main reader. I just think it’s reasonable for people to expect a Fire to do different things than an RSK…even if that doesn’t include everything a netbook does.
June 6, 2012 at 2:33 am |
If a person was disappointed with the Fire it must be because they didn’t do enough research. It is exactly what they said it would be. I love it and will no doubt buy the next one if I think they add something I really want. Don’t know now what that would be because I’m quite happy with it. One thing I use it for is to stream Christian radio while I’m at work. Works great for that but I also sometimes read (I have RSK I use most often for this), sometimes play a game and watch some Prime videos while eating out alone. If someone gave me an iPad I’m sure I’d love it but it isn’t worth $500 to me when the Fire does all I want.
June 6, 2012 at 2:22 pm |
Thanks for writing, Karen!
I don’t expect most people to do a lot of research for a consumer product, although they perhaps might benefit by it. It does add to the cost of the product, while reducing the risk. Having taught project management, I do tell people to “pay themwselves” for their time. If you spend three hours researching an EBR (E-Book Reader) before buying it and you make $15 an hour, add $45 to the price.
Of course, you could do this sort of research in three minutes, probably…so that’s only seventy-five cents.
June 6, 2012 at 3:56 am |
It would be interesting to see results if you had asked, “If you do not currently own a tablet but are considering purchasing one, would you be more likely to buy
Kindle Fire
Nook Tablet
iPad
June 6, 2012 at 2:24 pm |
Thanks for writing, Lady!
The ChangeWave survey does something like that. They don’t limit it to people who don’t own one. I would think that many tablets are bought by people who already own a tablet. They didn’t just say iPad. The big spin for a lot of people out of the survey is that the biggest competitor for the iPad 3 would be…they hypothetical iPad mini.
June 6, 2012 at 4:36 am |
In our household, we have 5 Kindle Fires and 3 eInk Kindles, 2 K3s and 1 K2. We also purchased a Fire as a gift for my son’s girlfriend and a K3 for my parents.
My daughter and I prefer our K3s for reading, it’s far superior and much easier on my eyes. For everything else, we use our Fires.
Magazines are far superior on the Fire but I prefer my Zinio subscriptions, I don’t have to worry about losing issues if I cancel a subscription or forget to “keep” on my Fire. I moved my Reader’s Digest subscription from my eInk Kindle to Zinio, it was also $5 cheaper.
I also prefer how the Fire handles content. The eInk Kindles have issues when there are a lot of items on the Kindle itself as well as a lot of items in archives. The Kindle becomes very slow, and if you have a large archive (over 3,000 items or so) it will spontaneously restart when you sync. As a result, I only sync when I absolutely have to and I stay in a book until it’s finished, I don’t navigate around.
Since the men of the family are more entertainment-minded, they prefer their Fires, although my youngest (currently at basic training) has really started reading more now that he has a Fire.
An improvement that you don’t mention is adding an SD card slot. You really do have to be careful about how much content you download and since it’s the only way to “keep” magazine issues, they tend to start filling things up.
Another improvement would be to interface with your Cloud Drive. Currently, you can store content there, but not access it from the Fire, except for music.
All in all, we really like our Kindles, we just use the eInk Kindles and Fires for different purposes.
June 6, 2012 at 2:28 pm |
Thanks for writing, Common!
Interesting insight…thanks!
I didn’t mention the SD slot, because they can’t add that to the current Kindle Fire with an update. That was the same reason I didn’t mention a physical volume switch. Those could appear in a future iteration, but that’s a different question.
June 7, 2012 at 12:35 am
What I felt was left off was also storage related. My biggest disappointment was that there is next to no integration with Amazon’s Cloud Drive. I expected something like DropBox or, at the very least, Google Docs. I want to take a doc out of the cloud, modify it on the Fire and then put it back. Can’t do that yet with Cloud Drive. I can with Box, CX, a sideloaded DropBox client, but not the space I’ve already paid for on Amazon’s cloud.
June 7, 2012 at 2:40 am
Thanks for writing, Jj!
In hindsight, I probably should have included the amount of storage in what disappointed people (although not in the question about what Amazon could change on the current model Kindle Fire).
You can use Google Docs on your Fire…and without sideloading anything. I do it in
Maxthon Mobile Web Browser
I’m not sure the ability to edit in the Cloud Drive is precisely a Fire issue, although it would make things easier on that device.
June 6, 2012 at 4:38 am |
One more thing, the rest of our extended family have iToys, but we don’t go there. Too expensive and too proprietary. I prefer Amazon’s take on the content world and their customer-centric attitude.
June 6, 2012 at 2:30 pm |
Thanks for writing, Common!
The Agency Model, arguably engineered by Apple, really hurt that company with me. They would have to do a lot to overcome that for me before I bought an iDevice. I suspect I’m unusual in that, though, and my kid did have an iPhone before that happened…but has recently replaced it with an Android phone.
June 6, 2012 at 5:54 am |
I said that it met my expectations, not exceeded them, but that’s because I did a *ton* of research, and knew exactly what I was getting by a while before the fire shipped. I know that “met expectations” is usually considered to be less complimentary than “exceeded expectations”, but I think to some degree exceeded sometimes just means that the person didn’t fully understand what they were getting. I also think that the majority of people disappointed with it didn’t do the research to figure out what they were getting
June 6, 2012 at 2:33 pm |
Thanks for writing, tuxgirl!
Interesting point. I guess I think in part about exceeding the pre-release expectations, which isn’t really fair here.
June 6, 2012 at 5:57 am |
People keep comparing the KF against the iPad. Bezos has been pretty clear that he doesn’t wish to compete head to head vs Apple. He’s been very adroit so far in finding product “gaps” where he can offer something not directly competitive with Apple.
That said, looking at the poll results, and past Amazon form, I think we can look forward to improved content management facilities, and most probably: reductions in price (Amazon’s weapon of choice
).
I personally would like to see a larger screen, but I’m not sure that’ll happen — as such a device would definitely be viewed as an iPad competitor. Using similar reasoning I’m not at all sure that Apple is going to come out with a “smaller” iPad either.
Come October we’re all also going to be looking at tablets running flavors of Windows 8. MS just delivered the “Release Preview” of W8. Reports say that it contains many snazzy apps: one of which getting high marks is a “metro style” kindle reader app.
Apps are the game changer going forward. As an example many were complaining about the KF’s limited storage and lack of SD slots and USB server capabilities. Clever apps were developed to use the KF’s WiFi to connect with external devices — in effect turning the WiFi connection into a USB server port — problem solved
The perennial product design question: do we want a device that does one thing very well, or an omni-capable device doing many different things? The W8 devices will do everything the iPad does plus most of what you can do today on a laptop.
One divide that remains: content consumption devices are not very good at content creation, and (to a lesser extent) vice versa.
June 6, 2012 at 12:35 pm |
You left off one disappointment-not enough storage space. That’s the biggest disappointment for me. There is not enough room for the apps I want, even though I have plenty of space left. Amazon limits the portion of space that can be used for apps, and it is not user configurable. So I have half or more of my memory free, but I have to uninstall an existing app in order to install a new one.
June 6, 2012 at 1:40 pm |
I love my Fire. It does everything I want it to do and more. Comes in a nice, little package. The screen crispness and clearness still blows me away. Granted, I still keep a K2 around to read outside, but I can read my Fire outside at dusk which is my fave time outside anyway.
My Mother has an Ipad. I’ve played around with it enough to know that it’s also a great machine. But neither of us use it to its full capabilities. I wouldn’t know how to in the first place. And, Apple isn’t forthcoming without a credit card on customer service. The extra size screen would be nice for the Fire, but then it wouldn’t fit in my purse like my Fire does.
I took a few months to read all the comments before I bought the Fire, wondering if it was an upgrade that I needed from the K2. I have not had even one second of buyers remorse. I love my Fire. It’s a very handy, dandy addition to my laptop. With the addition of all the Prime things that comes with, I’m set. If something happened to this Fire and I had to purchase another, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Thanks Amazon. Thanks Bufo. Thanks Forum.
June 6, 2012 at 7:01 pm |
I love the Fire as it is. It exceeded my expectations. I bought a refurb, knowing I could return it if I didn’t like it. Just as with my K3, it was love at first sight.
Yes louder volume would be nice. 3G capability would be nice. (Pay as you go, preferably).
What would make the Fire perfect would be the ability to organize one’s books and personal documents into folders and collections. 8 GB could hold a LOT of books! I hope this is something the engineers are working on.
June 7, 2012 at 2:09 am |
Thanks for writing, Anne!
Yes, I’ve heard that Amazon is working on a content organization system for the Fire. I’m guessing we see it in the next few months.
Amazon estimates you can put 6,000 books on a Kindle Fire. That 8GB is all of the memory on the Fire. There is 5.36GB of “Internal Storage” available. That’s also where you keep your downloaded books, music, magazines, personal documents, and videos. Apps have their own 1.17GB of storage.
June 6, 2012 at 10:29 pm |
Love my Fire , Two of the poll questions need other answers. For instance do not have I-pad.
June 7, 2012 at 2:16 am |
Thanks for writing, jbgator9!
I’m glad you love your Fire!
Not every question will apply to every person. I was interested on the question that involved the iPad and the Kindle Fire about relative degrees of satisfaction…and if you only own a Kindle Fire, you can’t tell me whether you are more satisfied with that or with your iPad.
I do polls pretty often: I’m sure you’ll find questions that work for you.
You always add a comment, just as you did here.
June 7, 2012 at 12:05 am |
I hate that these things are constantly getting compared. RSK vs. Fire vs. iPad….it’s like trying to compare a Vespa, a Camry, and taking the Limo.
A Vespa is a wonderful way to get around town, but I am not going to take the kids (if I had any) to school, get a month’s worth of groceries in one trip, etc.
The Camry would fit many people’s budget and does most everything, but it isn’t like you can throw a load of compost in the trunk or take to the red carpet at the Oscars.
You get the idea.
The issue with the Fire is that people trust Amazon, so they go for this great entry level tablet from them because of their trust in them. The problem lies in that most of the users aren’t ready for said entry-level android tablet when they don’t even know the password for their wifi or if they even have wifi.
What’s that acronym? Problem exists between….
June 7, 2012 at 2:24 am |
Thanks for writing, Gwen!
You can compare the three vehicles…it’s just that, as you suggest, it’s not a matter of picking one over the other for all circumstances. That’s what makes me laugh about the idea of a “Kindle killer” or “iPad killer”. There is room for a lot of different gadgets…
For those of you who don’t know, the acronym is
PEBCAK
That’s a way that IT folks try to be nice to the user when they discover that what happened when they were called to help was that the user was doing something wrong. It’s short for Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. By explaining that it was a “PEBCAK” issue, they don’t have to tell the person they did something wrong. We used to say “failure of the carbon-based unit” (that’s the person…the computer is silicon-based) as well. The one I would never, ever use is not polite. It goes like this:
“I need you to write down an ID code for me, so the next person knows what happened. First, write down
ID
Now, your code is ten and “T” as in Thomas. So, write that down…
ID10T”
I have heard people say that the problem was “ID Ten T”, but you can see that writing it down suggests something impolite (and culturally insensitve as well).
June 7, 2012 at 12:15 am |
>>they hypothetical iPad mini
Oh, no, they wouldn’t really have a mini pad, would they?
June 7, 2012 at 2:25 am |
Thanks for writing, Lady!
Oh, yes, that’s quite possible. It would likely have a seven-inch screen, putting it in much more direct competition with the Fire.