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Washington. Consumers worldwide are excited about tablet computers like Apple’s iPad and electronic readers such as Amazon’s Kindle, and sales will take off when prices drop, according to a new survey.

“I think we’re already at the starting point of mass adoption,” said John Rose, of The Boston Consulting Group, which conducted the survey of nearly 13,000 consumers in 14 countries.

“A million iPads in a month is a lot,” Rose said, referring to Apple’s first-month sales figures for the touch screen device. Other companies such as Sony, Samsung and Google were expected to come out with similar products, he added.

Fifty-one percent of consumers surveyed who were familiar with e-readers or tablet computers said they planned to buy one within a year and 73 percent said they planned to buy one within three years.

“The survey suggests that e-readers and tablets are not a niche product for early adopters but could become the MP3 players of this decade,” Rose said separately. “Grandmothers will soon be carrying them around.”

E-readers have been around for a few years but gained critical mass only in the late 2007 when Amazon introduced the Kindle, which has gone on to become a big hit.

But the survey revealed prices would have to drop before e-readers and tablets became established consumer products alongside television sets, personal computers and mobile phones.

“As with other major mass market consumer devices, the prices will come down,” Rose said. “They always do.

“I expect you’ll see the prices come down in the next 12 to 18 months. The first iPod was a $400 device, so there’s no reason why we won’t see the same cycle.”

US consumers said they were prepared to pay between $100 and $150 for a single-usage device like the Kindle or $130 to $200 for a multi-purpose device like the iPad, which can serve as an e-reader but also browse the Web or play video.

The Kindle cost $259 when it was launched in 2007, while the iPad, which came out in the United States last month, costs between $499 and $829.

The survey found most consumers would prefer a multi-purpose device. Sixty-six percent said they preferred a multi-purpose device, while 24 percent said they wanted a single-purpose device for reading electronic books. The rest were undecided.

“Consumers want to use these devices for a broad range of things, including Web surfing and e-mail,” Rose said. “These are easy and portable devices that will make it easy to do such things.”

In the United States, consumers are willing to pay between $5 and $10 for digital books, $5 to $10 for a monthly newspaper subscription and between $2 and $4 for a single issue of an online magazine.

The BCG survey was conducted in March and interviewed 12,717 consumers in Australia, Austria, Britain, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, South Korea, Spain and the United States.

 

Agence France-Presse