iPad satisfaction hits 95% in October ChangeWave survey, up 4 pts. from May
Apple's “magical” device the first choice of 80% of respondents who plan to buy a tablet — The iPad, which scored a 91% satisfaction rating in ChangeWave's May survey, inched up another four points in results released Tuesday.
Context & Ripple Effects
ChangeWave has been tracking iPad satisfaction all year: its May survey put the device at 91%, and Fortune reported in September that the iPad still led on consumer satisfaction (iPad Tops in Consumer Satisfaction). The October wave released Tuesday nudges that to 95% and adds a purchase-intent signal — the iPad is the first choice of 80% of respondents who plan to buy a tablet.
The pickup is broad enough that Bloomberg ran the same data under a sharper frame: 'Apple Increases Tablet Share to 95 Percent as Android Slips.' Read alongside Apple's quarter — revenue past Microsoft's by over $4 billion and Q3 iPhone sales pushing it past Research In Motion to fourth among mobile vendors — the survey lands at a moment when Apple's momentum across categories is compounding.
First-order effects
- Samsung and other early Android tablet makers enter the holiday season competing for the roughly 20% of intended buyers whose first choice isn't the iPad, while the iPad effectively owns the other 80% before any shelf-level competition begins.
- For Apple, the 95% figure functions as free demand capture going into Q4: satisfied owners plus an 80% first-choice share mean rivals must spend against a preference gap, not just a price gap.
Second-order effects
- Android licensees face pressure to differentiate on price and carrier subsidies rather than features, since the Bloomberg framing suggests Android's tablet share was already slipping as this data came out.
- Developers and publishers allocating tablet resources see a self-reinforcing case for iPad-first builds, widening the app-quality gap that new entrants would have to close.
Third-order effects
- If the satisfaction-plus-first-choice pattern holds through subsequent survey waves, the nascent tablet market risks structuring itself as a single-vendor category with Android fragmented at the margins — a dynamic closer to the iPod era than the smartphone race.
- Satisfaction metrics like ChangeWave's become the de facto competitive currency in the category, shifting rivalry from spec sheets to ecosystem lock-in and making second-mover pricing strategies the main lever left to challengers.
The trend: The tablet market is hardening into an Apple-defined category in which satisfaction and purchase intent compound ahead of hardware parity, leaving Android vendors to fight for the residual.