After iPad, Kindle Fire most desired tablet, study finds

Amazon's Kindle Fire has been available for less than a week, but already, it's a highly desired tablet, a new study has found.

Among future tablet buyers, 65 percent of respondents said that they are planning to purchase Apple's iPad, a ChangeWave Research study found. In no time at all, Amazon's Kindle Fire has been able to attract 22 percent of future tablet buyers. The Samsung Galaxy Tab line, which has been available for over a year, was only able to muster 4 percent demand among consumers looking to buy a tablet in the coming months. According to ChangeWave, no other tablet vendor was able to secure just 1 percent demand among consumers.

That said, the pool of consumers who want to buy a tablet in the next 90 days isn't necessarily big. This month, 14 percent of consumers said that they plan to buy a tablet in the next three months, according to ChangeWave. But that is a marked improvement over the 6 percent demand tallied in August.

According to ChangeWave, the Kindle Fire isn't necessarily going to impact the iPad, which will continue to dominate the tablet space if these numbers hold up, but it is a major threat to all other tablet vendors that are trying to establish their products in the space.

"The launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire represents a shot across the bow at Apple, who until now has almost completely dominated the tablet space," ChangeWave said today in a statement. "But the most immediate impact of the Amazon device is on the rest of the competition, where the survey shows it wreaking a devastating blow to a range of second-tier tablet manufacturers, including Motorola, RIM, Dell, HTC, HP and Toshiba."

But does Apple really have nothing to worry about? ChangeWave's latest findings follow earlier research from the company that found that 26 percent of those who preordered the Kindle Fire or said that they would buy it soon after launch were planning to delay an iPad purchase. Furthermore, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky said earlier this month that over 25 percent of those who plan to buy the Kindle Fire are saying that they'd rather have Amazon's tablet rather than the iPad.

So, perhaps the Kindle Fire will, in fact, impact the iPad. But impacting and beating the iPad are two very different things.

According to research from Strategy Analytics from last month, Apple secured 66.6 percent of the worldwide tablet market in the third quarter, easily outpacing all other vendors. The company is also expected to launch 12 million to 13 million iPad units this quarter, tripling the 4 million Kindle Fire tablets that will be shipping during the period, according to Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar.

ChangeWave's latest findings are based on 3,043 Norther American consumer responses.