Apple Earns Top Tablet Satisfaction Score

For the second year in a row, Apple's iPad ranked No. 1 for consumer satisfaction among tablets, though Amazon and Samsung tablets weren't too far behind, according to J.D. Power and Associates.

Of the 1,857 tablet owners polled by J.D. Power in February, Apple's iPad scored 836 on a 1,000-point scale. Amazon came in at 829, Samsung was at 822, Asus was 818, and Acer landed at 784.

Satisfaction was measured across five key factors: performance (26 percent), ease of operation (22 percent), styling and design (19 percent), features (17 percent), and cost (16 percent). Those polled have owned their tablet device for one year or less.

Interestingly, J.D. Power found that the ability to share tablets among family members plays a crucial role in overall customer satisfaction.

According to the study, 51 percent of tablet owners share their device with at least one other person. This differs across manufacturers, J.D. Power said a sharing option might help companies market their tablets.

"It is somewhat unexpected to find that although 64 percent of tablet owners were the sole decision maker involved in their device purchase, many of them share their tablet with someone else," Kirk Parsons, senior director of telecommunications services at J.D. Power and Associates, said in a statement. "It is important that manufacturers understand this dynamic and try to provide an exceptional experience for all users since this may improve future business prospects, as high satisfaction through sharing a tablet device may result in owners handing down their tablet to a family member or friend, and the likelihood of repurchasing a new tablet from the same brand and running the same operating system increases."

The study reported that 41 percent of tablet owners who share their device with four or more people indicate that they will buy their next tablet from their current manufacturer, in comparison to the 28 percent who don't share their device with anyone else. Almost half of tablet owners (46 percent) also share their device with their children and among those 46 percent, 30 percent of them have downloaded educational apps, compared with 16 percent that don't share with kids.

This is J.D. Power's second annual tablet report.