More Early Adopters Want Kindle Fire Than iPad

With a week to go before its Nov. 16 launch, Amazon’s forthcoming Kindle Fire is driving a lot of preorder demand — more than even Apple’s iPad.

A new survey conducted by ChangeWave and RBC Capital Markets found that five percent of 2,600 respondents had either already preordered or were “very likely” to buy the Fire, exceeding the four percent who said in 2010 that they were very likely to buy the iPad. Another 12 percent said they were “somewhat likely” to purchase the Fire, again surpassing the nine percent who said the same thing of the original iPad prior to its launch.

And of the five percent of “very likely” buyers, 26 percent said they would delay their iPad purchase to buy the Fire.

If those metrics are surprising, they really shouldn’t be. The Fire’s low price, relative to the iPad, is obviously a major attraction — $199 to the iPad’s $499. And — thanks to the iPad — consumers are now familiar enough with the tablet category to be comfortable dropping $199 on the Fire.

That said, the pent-up Kindle Fire demand on display in this survey suggests that Apple may finally have a true tablet rival with which to battle, as RBC analyst Mike Abramsky observes:

“Tablet contenders (Xoom, Galaxy Tab, PlayBook, etc.) have failed to gain appreciable traction against iPad’s estimated 67 percent share, and iPad 2 should be a popular holiday purchase,” he writes. “However, strong early Fire uptake seems likely, raising speculation Apple now faces a real tablet contender.”