Interest in Apple's iPad waning, says survey

The survey, published by online shopping comparison site Retrevo, indicates a failure on Apple's part to convince any new buyers to consider the company's new tablet computer.

The site ran a survey of more than 1,000 randomly-selected users from its Website the week before the announcement, followed by the same survey (over a different population sample, which might raise eyebrows) a week later.

Survey participants were asked a series of questions revolving around their interest in Apple's new product, ranging from whether they were aware of it to whether they thought they would need one and whether they would want to pay extra for optional 3G data functionality.

Survey results seem to reveal a definite decline in the level of interest among respondents once details about the iPad were revealed on January 27. Unfortunately for Apple, the number of respondents saying they had heard about the tablet but were not interested in buying one, doubled from 25% before the announcement to over 50% following the announcement.

When asked before the announcement if they thought they needed the tablet, 49% of respondents answered "no" with 30% saying they needed to know more about it before they could decide. After the announcement the percentage of respondents saying "no" to the iPad jumped to 61%.

Retrevo also claims that 59 percent of the people it interviewed do not want to pay the extra US$130 required to purchase a 3G-enabled iPad.