After topping J.D. Power and Associates’ customer satisfaction rankings for smartphones for the ninth consecutive study, Apple’s iPad has now emerged victorious in JD Power’s February 2013 tablet rankings. Specifically, the iPad recorded a score of 836 on JD Power’s overall TabletIndex Rankings.
The index is based on a 1,000-point scale. Amazon’s tablet scored 829 versus the study average of 828 points. The third and fourth-ranked Samsung and Asus tablets received respective scores of 822 and 818 while Acer came in fifth with a score of 782.
Despite Apple’s relatively modest lead in TabletIndex rankings, the iPad fared far better in consumer ratings, another important metric of the JD Power study. Consumers rated the Apple tablet ‘Among the Best,’ giving it a score of five out of five. Interestingly enough, no other tablet was rated about ‘Above Average’ (four out of five) while Acer received the lowest ranking of 2 out of 5 denoting ‘The Rest’…
Experiences evaluated by 1,857 tablet owners in February 2013 found the iPad performing well in four factors: performance, ease of operation, styling and design and features.
Amazon, of course, performed particularly well in the cost factor.
Among the other findings in the JD Power study:
- Tablet owners who also have a smartphone spend 36 percent more time browsing the Internet on their tablet than on their smartphone.
- Twenty-seven percent of tablet owners say they are likely to buy a new tablet within the next 12 months, compared with 37 percent in 2012.
- Ninety-four percent of highly satisfied tablet owners are likely to purchase additional consumer electronic devices from the same manufacturer.
Here’s a chart.
At press tie, the Why iPad web page wasn’t updated with these JD Power scores.
When Apple’s iPhone back in March 2013 topped JD Power’s satisfaction rankings for the ninth time straight, the company immediately refreshed its Why iPhone web page with an amusing change of graphics, depicted below.
JD Power’s tablet study measured tablet owner satisfaction among those who have owned their tablet for one year or less. The research firm took five factors into account, along with their order of importance: performance (26 percent), ease of operation (22 percent), styling and design (nineteen percent), features (seventeen percent) and cost (16 percent).
It’s interesting that cost was the least important factor in the study.
The study also found that 51 percent of tablet owners share their device with at least one other person.
Perhaps this will be a wake up call for Apple, which has yet to introduce multi user account support in iOS, something Google’s Android software has brought to tablet computing with the release of Jelly Bean-powered Nexus 7 tablet a year ago.