A poll run by JD Power & Associates has found that the most satisfied tablet pc users in the USA are iPad owners. The survey found that out of a 1000 possible points iPad scored a hefty 848 points. This was from a group of 1985 users that own tablets.
Hardly surprising really, Apple iPad owners tend to be a very dedicated people. Although, to give the iPad it’s due it has always been the front runner in consumer satisfaction scores. Apple may not always have the latest hardware in their tablets but they always put lots of expertise into the user experience. This is probably part of the reason they attacked Samsung so aggressively in the courts. There are many companies who have heavily invested in hardware but few have invested so much into the software and particularly the user interface of their tablet devices as Apple.
The iPad’s score does need to be put into perspective though, it is not out front on it’s own. In fact the Kindle Fire scored 841 points, only 9 less than the iPad. The Samsung Galaxy Tab scored a respectable 827 points, which I find a very interesting statistic. Why? Well because the Kindle and the Tab are very similar in terms of hardware and personally I think the Galaxy tab is the sightly better tablet. What this proves is that for a user to be satisfied you have to do more than just build the best hardware. You need focus on the user experience and that is what the Kindle does better.
The Kindle Fire has been built with a purpose and that is to make the users Amazon experience a better one and it does this very well. In fact you can hardly tell that this tablet is running Android! Interestingly the Noble Nook only scored 803 points. Have Noble failed where Amazon have succeeded? Once again the Noble has tried to make a tablet that is locked into their website experience. However they have left more Android available to the user and strangely this could be costing the points in user satisfaction.
The breakdown in the user experience is as follow:
- The most important user perception was perceived performance. 26% of users picked this as the most important factor. Interestingly the iPad is probably not the fastest of the tablets tested, assuming that most people interviewed would not have the latest iPad yet. However just because you don’t have the latest hardware does not mean perceived speed is low.
- Secondly ease of operation. 22% picked this as most important factor.
- Third was design at 19%.
