NPD: Nearly three fourths of small businesses are eyeing tablets for 2012

By Mike Flacy December 31, 2011

Apple-iPad-2-Newsstand — Image used with permission by copyright holder

According to new research from the NPD Group, approximately seventy-three percent of small to medium businesses with less than 1,000 employees are planning on purchasing tablets over the next twelve months. This constitutes a five percent increase in businesses when the same question was asked during the second quarter of 2011. According to the research, the average investment in tablets will be more than $21,000 for small businesses over 2012 and 90 percent of respondents believe that they will spend at least that amount, if not more, on new tablet technology. In addition, the top preference within the tablet category is the Apple iPad, according to the survey.

Small businesses with less than 50 employees plan to budget about $2,000 on new technology this year, but just over half are interested in tablets. In addition, those organizations are less likely to invest in the Apple iPad. Small businesses with 50 to 200 employees have about a $10,000 budget for technology and companies with 201 to 500 employees are looking to spend ab out $27,000. Medium businesses with 501 to 999 employees have an average budget of nearly $40,000 during 2012 and nearly 90 percent of these businesses are looking to invest in tablets over the next twelve months.

Less than 20 percent of respondents plan on spending less on technology during 2012 compared to the current year. In addition, ten percent of all respondents don’t plan on spending any money on new desktop computers, laptops or tablets. This percentage increases significantly in the fewer than 50 employee companies as these organizations plan on cutting all spending related to computer technology over the next twelve months. This data was collected during a quarterly survey in September 2011, thus tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire haven’t been included in the survey. However, the appeal of the Kindle Fire is squarely targeted at consumers rather than attempting to attract businesses.

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