Consumers worldwide are very interested in tablet computers like Apple’s iPad and electronic readers such as Amazon’s Kindle, and sales of the devices could take off when prices drop, according to a new survey.
“I think we’re already at the starting point of mass adoption,” said John Rose of the Boston Consulting Group, which conducted the survey of nearly 13,000 consumers in 14 countries.
“A million iPads in a month is a lot,” Rose said on Monday, referring to Apple’s first month sales figures for the touchscreen device. Other companies such as Sony, Samsung and Google were expected to come out with similar products, he said.
Fifty-one percent of consumers surveyed who were familiar with e-readers or tablet computers said they planned to purchase one within a year and 73 percent said they planned to buy one within three years.
“The survey suggests that e-readers and tablets are not a niche product for early adopters but could become the MP3 players of this decade,” Rose said separately in a press release. “Grandmothers will soon be carrying them around.”
The survey revealed prices will have to drop before e-readers and tablets become established consumer products alongside TV sets, personal computers and mobile phones.
“As with other major mass market consumer devices the prices will come down,” Rose said. “They always do.”
“I expect you’ll see the prices come down in the next 12 to 18 months,” he said. “The first iPod was a US$400 device, so there’s no reason why we won’t see the same cycle.”
US consumers said they were prepared to pay between US$100 and US$150 for a single-usage device like the Kindle or US$130 to US$200 for a multi-purpose device like the iPad, which can serve as an e-reader but also browse the Web or play video.
The Kindle, which was launched in 2007, costs US$259 while the iPad, which came out in the US last month, costs between US$499 and US$829.
The survey found most consumers would prefer a multi-purpose device. Sixty-six percent said they preferred a multi-purpose device while 24 percent said they wanted a single-purpose device for reading electronic books. The remainder were undecided.
“Consumers want to use these devices for a broad range of things, including Web surfing and e-mail,” Rose said. “These are easy and portable devices that’ll make it easy to do such things.”
In the US, consumers are willing to pay between US$5 and US$10 for digital books, US$5 to US$10 for a monthly newspaper subscription and between US$2 and US$4 for a single issue of an online magazine.
The BCG survey was conducted in March of 12,717 consumers in Australia, Austria, Britain, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, South Korea, Spain and the US.
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