Amazon's Kindle Fire: Likes and Dislikes surveyed

Amazon's colour tablet, the Kindle Fire, has been a success, and a ChangeWave Research survey suggests it is likely to do what was intended: increase owners' propensity to buy things from Amazon. However, the Kindle Fire's satisfaction rating is lower than the Apple iPad's. Indeed, many of the things that US buyers dislike about the Kindle Fire are features the iPad 2 offers, albeit at a much higher the price.

ChangeWave Research surveyed 2,607 North American consumers for its January consumer spending report, which costs $1,500. However, it has published some of the data in a blog post today that "shows Amazon continuing to grab share in the Home Entertainment market and in overall online sales".

The survey shows that 20 percent of respondents say they'll spend more money online at Amazon.com vs 11 percent who will spend less, in the next 90 days: "numbers that overwhelmingly dwarf the other online retailers surveyed", says ChangeWave. Only 3 percent think they will spend more at eBay or Best Buy.

Where only 20 percent reckon they will spend no money at Amazon.com, the figures for other sites range from 65 percent for eBay to 85 percent for Target.com.

ChangeWave also asked 254 new Kindle Fire owners about their likes and dislikes. It found that 54 percent were Very Satisfied with the device while another 38 percent were Somewhat Satisfied: a 92 percent satisfaction rating.

ChangeWave says: "While the 54 percent Very Satisfied rating for the Kindle Fire is considerably below the 74 percent rating of the industry leading Apple iPad, it is higher than the 49 percent average rating for all of the other tablet devices combined." (The iPad and other tablets were rated in a November survey.)

The main Likes for the Kindle Fire were the price (59 percent), the colour screen (31 percent), ease of use (27 percent), and the book selection (20 percent). The main Dislikes were the lack of an up/down button for volume (27 percent), the lack of a camera (21 percent), and the relatively short battery life (15 percent). More Likes and Dislikes are shown in the bar charts below.

A proportion of buyers would clearly like the Kindle Fire to have features that are found in the iPad 2, since their dislikes include lack of 3G/4G phone capability (12 percent), the shortage of apps (12 percent), the smaller screen size (10 percent), and the lack of a microphone (10 percent). However, the overwhelming number (59 percent) like the Kindle Fire's $199 price, and they may have declined to pay three to four times as much for an iPad 2 with 3G ($629 with 16GB, $829 for 64GB).

However, Amazon has long been expected to launch another version of the Kindle Fire with a 10-inch screen. As I noted here on 10 June last year (Amazon tablet could add to market explosion), early rumours suggested two Amazon tablets. The first, codenamed Coyote, was an entry-level device. The second, Hollywood, was said to be far more powerful. If it lives up to its all-singing, all-dancing codename, it could deliver what today's Somewhat Satisfied Fire-owners want.

@jackschofield


Kindle Fire Likes


Kindle Fire Dislikes

Note: graphs do not use the same axes. For comparison, the
biggest Dislike (27 percent) is equivalent to the third-biggest Like.