A survey by market research firm ChangeWave indicates that the iPad is rapidly catching up to the Kindle in the e-book reader market.

Of 2,800 respondents who took ChangeWave’s survey, 32 percent said they used an iPad as an e-reader, while 47 percent said they used a Kindle.

ChangeWave also polled future e-reader buyers planning to buy readers in the next 30 days, and 42 percent said they were likely to buy an iPad, while 33 percent said they’d probably buy a Kindle.

That shows fast growth for the iPad in the e-reader market, especially when you consider the iPad launched in April, while the Kindle has been around since 2007.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for Amazon (yet). Amazon offers a free Kindle app for the iPhone and iPad to download Amazon e-books. Because of that move, Amazon saw a surge in e-book sales, according to research firm Cowen. The firm estimated in an October report that Kindle e-book book sales via the Kindle e-book store were on track to grow 195 percent to $701 million this year.

“iPad is not having a negative impact on Kindle device or e-book sales,” according to the report, written by Cowen analysts Jim Friedland and Kevin Kopelman. “In fact, we think the adoption of tablets will boost Kindle e-book sales.”

However, iPad customers are, of course, downloading apps through the iBooks store more than on the Kindle store: 60 percent of people reading books on the iPad say they use iBooks most often, and 31 percent they use the Kindle app most often, according to the Cowen report.

So if iPad sales outpace the Kindle e-readers, as the ChangeWave survey suggests, Apple could eventually take a sizable chunk of e-book sales away from Amazon. Credit Suisse analyst Spencer Wang predicted earlier this year that Amazon’s share of the e-book market will shrink from 90 percent to 35 percent by 2015, according to AllThingsD.

See Also:

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• Amazon Strikes Back at the iPad With New, $140 Kindle
• The iPad Will Violate the Kindle’s Space, And Other First …

Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com

Authors: Brian X. Chen

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