Los Angeles – Apple products and tablet PCs are on many wish
lists this holiday season, according to a PriceGrabber study.
PriceGrabber’s third winter holiday survey found laptop
computers losing out as gift favorites to tablet PCs with 79 percent of those
surveyed stating they would rather have a tablet. Of that figure, 83 percent
indicated they preferred an Apple iPad or iPad 2 over competing tablets.
The just-shipped Amazon Kindle Fire received 4 percent of
the votes and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 2 percent. Other tablets gaining mention
were the Motorola Xoom, Blackberry Playbook, Asus Eee Pad, Toshiba Thrive and
Asus Eee Slate.
E-reader sales may suffer this holiday season, the survey
said, as 72 percent of shoppers believed tablets will replace stand-alone
e-readers as gifts. In addition, 62 percent said the iPad was a better e-reader
than its competitors. The Kindle was the next favorite, at 27 percent; the
Barnes & Noble Nook was the favorite among 7 percent, and the Sony Reader
was first choice for 2 percent of those surveyed.
Apple was also the first choice in the smartphone area.
Seventy-two percent of the people would prefer an iPhone as a gift, with
Samsung’s coming in a distant second, with 7 percent. Six percent said HTC, 5
percent said a BlackBerry, and 5 said percent Motorola.
PriceGrabber conducted the survey from Oct. 18-26. The
survey includes responses from 3,574 U.S. online shopping consumers.
