According to new research from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and The Economist Group, eleven percent of U.S. adults own a tablet computer and over 75 percent of that group uses the tablet on a daily basis. The daily users typically spend 95 minutes using the tablet on any given day. While checking up on news is one of the most popular tasks to perform on a tablet, only 14 percent of that group have spent money on a premium news service. The majority of news junkies use the tablet to check headlines while 42 percent of the group uses the tablet to read full articles. Approximately 16 percent use the tablet to share news stories on a social network like Facebook and the same amount of users watch news video on the tablet.
Other popular tablet activities include checking email, using social networks, playing games, reading books and watching video like movie rentals. Over 50 percent of tablet owners have a college degree and have a family income of more than $75,000. Sixty-two percent are currently employed full time and 46 percent are between 30 to 49 years old. People reading news on the tablet were much more likely to get all news information from reading articles on a desktop computer or laptop rather than a newspaper or television. Fifty-five percent of the group prefer to read long articles on the tablet rather than a printed copy or on a regular computer monitor.
Within the 86 percent of tablet owners that hasn’t paid a dime for a news article, over 20 percent would pay five dollars a month for access to a premium news service while only 10 percent would pay ten dollars a month. News junkies primarily use the Web browser to read news, but over 20 percent use apps for that purpose. Tablet owners that use the device for news are also more likely to enjoy reading a book on the tablet over a paper copy.
