Eight percent of U.S. adults owned a tablet device in May, up from the 5 percent that reported having one in November 2010, according to research by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

Meanwhile, ownership of e-reader devices stood at around 12 percent, the research center said. Adoption of such devices continues to grow at a faster rate than tablets, having doubled from 6 percent market penetration in November of last year. In addition, hree percent of survey respondents reported owning both an e-reader and a tablet.

In terms of overall penetration, however, e-readers and tablets continue to lag behind devices such as cellphones and laptops. Of the 2,277 respondents Pew surveyed for the research, 83 percent reported owning the former, and 56 percent the latter. MP3 player ownership stood at around 44 percent, meanwhile.

 

Interesting story from AdAge

Why It's Getting Harder to Find a Good Magazine Newsstand

Problem Partly Began When Convenience Stores Dropped Skin Titles

by Nat Ives
Published: January 19, 2011

Magazines' retail outlets in North America sank by 18,000 between December 2007 and this month, an 11.3% decline to 142,000 in just three years, according to the Magazine Information Network, or MagNet, which tracks magazine sales. In the United States magazine retail outlets declined 11.4% to 117,000, MagNet said.

And you can blame some of that decline on convenience stores' decisions to stop carrying skin mags. But more on that in a moment.

Although subscriptions comprise the vast majority of most magazines' circulation, newsstand sales are crucial for the impulse purchases that can lead to subscription commitments.

And single-copy sales have been experiencing a long swoon, falling 5.6% in the first half of 2010 from the first half a year earlier, 9.1% in the second half of 2009, 12.4% in the previous six months and 11.1% and 6.3% in the halves before that, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

After the 'men's sophisticates' go...
There are plenty of reasons for the sales declines, but a falling number of retail outlets for magazines doesn't help. Convenience stores that sell magazines have declined significantly, partly because many decided to ditch magazines like Playboy, Hustler and Penthouse, according to Gil Brechtel, president-CEO of MagNet.

"A lot of convenience stores no longer sell the 'men's sophisticates,'" Mr. Brechtel said. "It's really when they were popular or when they were selling men's sophisticates, their volume was enough that wholesalers could go to them and make a profit. When you eliminate men's sophisticates, probably 70% to 80% of their volume was removed and made everything less profitable for wholesalers."

Even as specialty retailers such as Home Depot and Linens 'n Things have increasingly stocked magazines, meanwhile, big box stores such as Walmart have been driving smaller superettes and local drug stores out of business.

Smaller volume at Linens 'n Things
Walmart has been giving less prominence to magazines in its own stores, moving the big magazine racks to the back, Mr. Brechtel said. And Linens 'n Things just doesn't generate the same newsstand sales as a traditional store with a wide selection of titles.

So are the declines impossible to slow or stop?

"The other factor has been the economy," Mr. Brechtel said. "When the economy improves we will see a steadying of single-copy sales. I would think that there will probably be a continual decline, but perhaps not as quick as previously."

Follow Nat Ives on Twitter.

This survey teaches us that people are moving from print to their tablet devices, in this case the IPad to read the news. But what is a little suspicious is that it claims that people are dropping their print subscriptions at an alarming rate- if they spend more than an hour a day reading news on their IPad.  And out of the 1,600 people surveyed they never actually say how many spend an hour a day reading news on their IPad.

From AdWeek. Full story here

Are iPad Apps Killing Newspapers? Survey Says…

Apple tablet–using respondents canceling paper subscriptions at alarming rate

Dec 9, 2010

- Lucia Moses

Are iPad apps the new newspaper killer? A new survey out today showed that print newspaper subscribers who are heavy iPad users are “very likely” to cancel their print subscriptions.
 
The survey by the University of Missouri’s Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute is one of the first deep dives into how people are consuming news content on the eight-month-old device and its potential impact on print readership.
 
RJI gathered responses from more than 1,600 iPad users online from September to November.
 
The survey showed that 58 percent of respondents who use the Apple tablet at least an hour a day for news are very likely to cancel their subscription in the next six months. One in 10 said they had already done so and have switched to reading digital newspapers on their iPad.
 
A potential positive finding for newspapers as they try to charge people for their digital content is, nine in 10 said they were likely to use newspapers’ apps to get news, rather than using a Web browser to go to the papers’ Web sites, most of which are free.
 
“These findings are encouraging for newspaper publishers who plan to begin charging for subscriptions on their iPad app editions early next year, but our survey also found a potential downside: iPad news apps may diminish newspaper print subscriptions in 2011," said Roger Fidler, RJI’s program director for digital publishing.
 
In a separate survey released today, GfK MRI found about equal amounts of adults reading newspapers and magazines via apps or mobile devices. Four percent of adults reported reading a newspaper via an app in the past 30 days, compared with 3.7 percent of adults reading magazine content this way.

From Marketing Charts. Read full story here.

They are not right about the long-term viability of alternative methods of delivering news via e-reader type devices but this story points out some of the horrible economics currently in place for publishers distributing content on Kindle and similar devices. One missing ingredient the story does not mention - ads. Currently the e-readers don't deliver the ads with the content but presumably when that begins, it will change the equation.

E-readers, Tablets Not Likely To Save Newspapers

Some industry watchers had predicted that e-readers just might save the newspaper industry - but that has yet to happen, despite the fact that e-reader sales are soaring, reports MediaBuyerPlanner.

About six million e-reader devices - including Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s e-reader, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and Conde Nast’s Skiff - will be sold this year, Forrester predicts (via EditorsWeblog).

Newspaper publishers get 30% of subscriptions sold on e-readers, and more newspapers are becoming available every day. Digital newspaper distributor NewspaperDirect, for example, is boosting the number of newspapers and magazines available on the Kindle by 1,400, according to Canada’s Globe and Mail.

Newspapers Can’t Make E-reader Numbers Work

But six million e-readers sold are a pittance when compared with the general US population of more than 300 million people, and the number of newspaper subscriptions sold via those devices will be even smaller. “If the Dallas-Fort Worth area has two percent of that, that’s only 6,000 Kindles,” said James Moroney, publisher and CEO of the Dallas Morning News. Moroney crunches the numbers in a Portfolio article, showing how insignificant e-reader subscriptions really are.

Tablets - the New Newspaper Savior?

Tablets are the latest device being touted as the savior for newspapers, MediaBuyerPlanner said.  With touch-screen interfaces, color screens, web browsing and e-reader capabilities, some think such devices will speed the consumption of digital newspapers. Apple’s iSlate is one such device, said to be ready for launch early this year.

However, as these devices are expected to cost as much as $1,000, they may not be considered as “must-haves” for many consumers. And e-readers boast longer battery life and text that is more easily readable.

Newspaper publishers could boost the potential to cash in on tables by fully embracing multimedia content production and multiplatform distribution, points out the Innovations in Newspapers blog, which offers 10 ways newspapers must adjust in order to take advantage of new content delivery systems like tablets and e-readers.

E-reader Audiences More Affluent, Well Educated

One hope for newspapers in terms of e-reader audiences is that users skew higher in terms of education and income than the general public, which means newspapers may be able to attract more luxury advertisers. According to Mediamark Research & Intelligence, e-reader users are 11% more likely than the average adult to own their home and are 87% more likely to have annual household income of $100K+. And they are 111% more likely than the average adult to have obtained a Bachelor’s or post-graduate degree.

“Clearly, users of the current generation of e-readers are highly educated, upscale and internet savvy,” said Anne Marie Kelly, SVP, marketing & strategic planning, at MRI.