High levels of consideration for competitor tablets suggest Apple won’t have it all their own way in 2011 but they’ll be thankful for the competition in the long run.

A recent article in The Guardian [1] posited that one of the best things that could happen to Apple to ensure continued success of the iPad was for competitors to launch tablet computers, and for these products to enjoy moderate levels of success. As happened with the iPod many moons ago, the thinking here is that a batch of serious rival devices would help cement tablets as a ‘legitimate’ category in consumers’ minds, encouraging continued sales and crucially allowing Apple to progressively refine and release further iterations of their hardware. (Although the impressive sales of the iPad so far would suggest this won’t be an issue.)

Of course, the tablet market is now visibly exploding: Samsung launched the android-powered Galaxy[2] last week to mostly positive reviews and BlackBerry’s much anticipated ‘Playbook’ is due to arrive in the New Year in the US. With devices from a myriad of other manufacturers waiting in the wings, it’s going to be an interesting 12 months.

For some initial context as to how this battle might play out, in October GfK spoke to a representative sample of UK consumers to assess levels of interest in these devices.[3] Bearing in mind that the research was conducted prior to the Galaxy launch and without any firm details on the Playbook publicly available, the results suggest that Apple are indeed going to get the competition that this category needs to thrive.

Overall, 6% of the sample stated intent to purchase a tablet PC in the next six months. (As a benchmark, 14% intend to acquire a new smartphone and 14% a Windows based laptop/notebook. Interestingly, 6% expressed likelihood to purchase a netbook, suggesting tablets will not completely eat away this category just yet.)

Using these figures as a rough guide (and applying a down-weight to account for consumer overclaim), we could still expect around 367,000 new tablet sales in the UK by the end of Q1, 2011[4].

As might be expected, the iPad received the highest level of consideration amongst these would-be purchasers, with around four in five saying they would consider Apple (and, tellingly, next to no one stating they wouldn’t.) However, one in two stated they would at least consider purchasing the BlackBerry Playbook, and two in five the Samsung Galaxy pad. Given the scarcity of available details on the latter two products at that time, this consideration would mostly be driven by the strong associations that these brands carry.

Now that the Samsung tablet has actually been launched with a number of consumer-friendly features (camera, video chat, lighter weight, ability to run Adobe flash), and rumours are suggesting a low-priced Playbook that one can join up with their Smartphone contract [5], indicatively, one would feel Apple may not have it all their way next year. It will be interesting to see what an iPad mark II will bring to the table.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on how this develops and publish some updated figures in the New Year when the category becomes even further established in consumers’ minds. Watch this space.

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[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/sep/17/ipad-apple-2011-revision-expect

[2] http://www.samsung.com/uk/galaxytab/

[3] 881 online interviews were conducted by GfK NOP among a UK representative sample of internet users. The fieldwork was conducted between 22– 25 October 2010

[4] The calculation used in the estimate was based on the % of respondents from the research who indicated they intend to purchase a tablet PC in the next 6 months, expressed as a proportion of the current UK, adult population accessing the internet. (38.3 million adult internet users taken from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=8 ) This figure was then downweighted using GfK’s truth index, designed to deal with the phenomenon of consumer overclaim. This index effectively downgrades the level of claimed purchase or switching to a more realistic level. This is done by applying different weights to each category of likelihood which is expressed. In this case, of those who say they will probably buy, we should assume only 16% actually will.

[5] http://www.wallblog.co.uk/2010/11/10/blackberrys-playbook-to-sell-for-under-500/

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Tags: Android, Apple, Blackberry, Consumer, Ecosystem, Galaxy Tab, iPad, Market Share, Mobile OS, Netbooks, Playbook, RIM, Samsung, Samsung Galaxy Pad, Smartphones, Tablet PC, The Guardian