I’ve written in the past about Amazon’s (eventual) entry into the tablet world. Some interesting research from Retrevo consistent with points I’ve made in the past. First, consumers have grown quickly comfortable with Amazon as an OEM. You’ll recall that the original Kindle was panned heavily by critics, but consumers have warmed quickly to Amazon devices.
As you can see from the chart, 55 percent of respondents interested in a tablet say they would seriously consider buying a tablet from Amazon.
The results of the study are also consistent with a point I’ve made repeatedly on differentiation. In order to compete in a quickly crowded segment one must differentiate. It isn’t just that OEMs are competing with Apple in this space – in order to succeed in the tablet segment, OEMs must bring to market something different. They can differentiate by screen size, form factor, feature set, or price. Until now there has been minimal differentiation and I’m not sure there is enough flexibility to compete by differentiating form factor or feature set. There might be large enough segments of the population interested in screen sizes less than (or more than) 10 inches that there is still room to compete by screen size. Ultimately, I think the most likely place to compete will be price (assuming the user experience is comparable). The results of the study suggest half of those interested in a tablet would consider an Android tablet over an iOS tablet if it was priced below $300.
