A report providing insights on the U.S. tablet market recently released by comScore states that the reach of tablet computers has climbed up to critical, with about 1 in 4 people who have smartphones also owning a tablet within the 3-month period that ended in April 2012. It was also found that those who use tablet computers have a higher tendency of watching videos on their device in comparison to those who use smartphones, and that one in every 10 tablet owners view videos on their gadgets on a daily basis.

“Tablets are one of the most rapidly adopted consumer technologies in history and are poised to fundamentally disrupt the way people engage with the digital world both on-the-go and perhaps most notably, in the home,” says comScore SVP of Mobile Mark Donovan. “It’s not surprising to see that once consumers get their hands on their first tablet, they are using them for any number of media habuts including TV viewing.”

50% of tablet owners watch videos on their Device while 26.7% are willing to pay to do so. (Image: Siddartha Thota, via Flickr / CC

Within just two years after the iPad – the first tablet computer to gain a significant traction in the market – came to the market, the taking up of tablets has rapidly increased mainly due to the launching of new devices that come in different price ranges and boast different features. For the month of April this year, around 16.5 percent of mobile phone users have used a tablet. This represents an 11.8 percentage point increase in comparison to last year. The growth of the device’s traction in the market has become even more significant among those who are already smartphone users, with about 25 percent of them using a tablet computer in April, showing a 13.9 percent increase in percentage points within one year. Those who are feature phone owners showed a little lower interest with only 10.4 percent of them having used a tablet for the past year, demonstrating a predictive tendency implication in the market that smartphone owners are more likely to own a tablet computer than the one who uses a feature phone.

A demographic on the mobile device audience implies that those who use tablet computers and those who use smartphones are similar when it comes to gender composition, with those who use tablets only a little bit more likely to be female than those who will use smartphones. However, when it comes to age composition, tablet users showed a little leaning to the older age range than those who use smartphones. For both tablet computers and smartphones, users have the densest overall concentration fall between ages 25 and 44. In comparison to smartphone users, the tablet users’ probability to fall into the 65 and older age bracket is 28 percent higher, and for them to fall into the 18 to 24 age bracket is 27 percent less probable.

The analysis also shows that most tablet users belong to households that have bigger incomes, which indicates that tablet computers may still come as a luxury for many. Almost 60 percent of those who own tablet computers come from households that have incomes of $75, 000 or higher, while 50 percent or 1 in 2 smartphone owners come from households of the same income bracket.

Further probing on the content consumption of tablet computers revealed that more than 50 percent of those who use tablets watched videos and/or television on their device in April, while only 20 percent of those who used smartphones did so in the same month. One explanation for this is that tablets have larger screens which make it a better choice for watching videos than the smartphone. Furthermore, the tablet user’s watching videos from his device is more likely to become a habit. Demographics show that 18.9 percent of those who use tablet computers watch videos on their device at least once during the month of April, 9.5 percent of which watched videos on their device almost every day. Of the 18.9 percent who watched videos on their tablets during the month, 1 in 4 – or 26.7 percent – of them paid to watch the videos, emphasizing the sizeable potential of monetisation that this platform can present to content providers.

About Francis Rey Balolong

A coffee junkie who spends most of his time writing about the latest news on social media and mobile technology. I would definitely consider myself a nerd (in the coolest most hipster way possible). That being said, I love technology, music, writing, and all things mobile. Follow me: Google+ Twitter

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