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Chart of the week: A Snapshot of E-reader and Tablet Owners
The number of Americans owning either a tablet or e-reader is now 29%. Take a look at who owns them: for example, 41% of e-reader owners are male and 58% are female.
More: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/E-readers-and-tablets.aspx
A new report from Pew Internet finds that tablet and e-reader ownership nearly doubled over the holiday gift-giving period, from 10% of adults in December to 19% in January for each device. Overall, almost one in three American adults (29%) currently own at least one of these devices.
From the interview:
Book publishers are not always known for the technical savvy. It doesn’t help that the main eBook retailers don’t all conform to one standard eBook format, and they have to create different files for different bookstores.
It is not a single format to rule them all. Most publishers are starting to figure out that this is a big deal. They want to put out eBooks and have it not be frustrating. A consumer says I want an eBook; I go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Apple and then read it that way. Amazon is 70 percent of the eBook market because they are doing it well. They make it easy for consumers. Barnes & Noble holds second place because they focus on the customer experience. That is what is going to sell eBooks. Kindle and ePub will be the main formats because of this. It’s only when you get into children’s books and enhanced eBooks that other formats come into play.
These special formats read better on tablets. How do tablets change the landscape for the e-reading experience?
There is a lot of hype around tablets, but I still think that a black and white e-reader is the best device to read a book. I don’t think there is a comparison between e-readers and tablets. They are different things; I don’t equate the two. I have an iPad, but I don’t use it for reading that often. Most of the time I use it for other kinds of things like watching videos, surfing the Web and playing video games. Tablets have the benefit of being multimedia devices, but they aren’t the best way to read eBooks. Dedicated e-reading devices are a better experience for reading, and they lead to greater consumption of eBooks.
Half of Adult Cell Phone Owners Have Apps on Their Phones
Our latest report explores recent trends in app downloads: Who uses apps? What do they download? Who pays for apps—and how much? Read more…
Another great tidbit from the report, as reported by TechJournal:
In February of 2010, Pew Internet reported for the first time that laptops had overtaken desktops in popularity among 18-29 year-olds, and in the current survey, laptop ownership (57%) has equaled desktop ownership (55%) for the full adult population.
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Kindle Owners Who Subscribe to Amazon Prime Will Be Able to Borrow E-Titles - Wall Street Journal
As the e-reader and tablet wars heat up, Amazon.com Inc. is launching a digital-book lending library that will be available only to owners of its Kindle and Kindle Fire devices who are also subscribers to its Amazon Prime program.
The program will be limited, at least at the beginning, in what is available to borrow. Amazon will initially offer slightly more than 5,000 titles in the library, including more than 100 current and former national bestsellers, such as Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”
There are some pretty major restrictions at the moment:
None of the six largest publishers in the U.S. is participating. Several senior publishing executives said recently they were concerned that a digital-lending program of the sort contemplated by Amazon would harm future sales of their older titles or damage ties to other book retailers.
Moreover, Amazon will restrict borrowers to one title at a time, one per month. Borrowers can keep a book for as long as they like, but when they borrow a new title, the previously borrowed book automatically disappears from their device.
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UPDATE: More context & discussion here.
