Tablet war now a two horse race (iPad Vs Kindle Fire) says YouGov

Some interesting stuff from poling company YouGov which has been asking consumers what they think about Tablet PCs. To be fair you can probably guess its main conclusions that 1, The iPad is the tablet most people want. 2, That £250 is the price point at which sales of tablet PC will go stratospheric and 3, The iPad’s only serious rival is likely to be the kindle Fire.

“Apple is far and away the current UK market leader in terms of brand awareness, preference and price,” says Russell Feldman, Associate Director for Technology and Telecoms Consulting at YouGov. “But the introduction of the Kindle Fire, with its compelling features and even more attractive price, will make it very hard indeed for other players to compete. The Kindle Fire benefits not only on price and specifications, but also in the value and trust consumers have in the Amazon brand. What’s more it has the potential to be a major game-changer given the depth of Amazon’s downloadable content as well as its burgeoning application store – something that has underpinned consumers’ loyalty to Apple over other tablets running an Android OS.”

The research doesn’t deliver any good news for Apple’s rival brands like Samsung, Motorola and Acer. Apparently “72% of “hot prospects” (respondents who are keen to get a tablet) will consider purchasing an iPad2 with a further 61% expecting to get one. However, the next most popular tablets are the out of date iPad1 at 14% followed by the original Samsung Galaxy Tab at 7%. Other competitors fared even worse, with just 3% of “hot prospects” expecting to get a HTC, 3% a BlackBerry and just 1% favouring an Acer.”

Feldman added “This is the mountain Android-based tablets need to climb, but by launching a rival ecosystem at an extremely competitive price, Amazon is likely to make a rapid approach to the summit, at the expense not necessarily of Apple, but of its rival Android stable mates.”