Study: Nearly a Quarter of U.S. Adults Own a Tablet

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Apple loses considerable percentage of market due to emergence of cheaper tablets.

Pew Research Center has found that 22 percent of U.S. adults polled own a tablet, while 3 percent of those polled said they regularly use someone else's tablet.

The percentage has been growing since last year, Pew stated, with the increase due to the introduction of more cheaper tablets during the latter stages of 2011.

Approximately 68 percent of tablet owners bought their tablet within the last year, with 32 percent purchasing their device during 2012.

The emergence of affordable tablets has also attributed to the decrease of iPad's market share. 52 percent of tablet owners own an iPad, which is a considerable drop from its 81 percent market share last year. The rest of market, meanwhile, mainly consists of Android devices. Notable devices include Amazon's Kindle Fire at 21 percent, followed by the Samsung Galaxy Tab at 8 percent.

Apple's tablet market share may drop even further; the survey was conducted from June 29 through August 8 among 9,513 adults who were 18 years of age or older, and therefore it was conducted before the introduction of Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD. Both of the devices feature a lower price tag than the iPad.

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Zak Islam
35 Comments Comment from the forums
  • southernshark
    The current gen of tablets are good for surfing the net, skyping and that sort of thing. I can not type on them, even on the full sized ones. I use an Ipad "3" at work and simply can not work the keys consistently. Changing the operating system won't change that.

    I still think tablets are cool and are offering some real utility to people. But I don't see them replacing the desktop for serious use, whether that serious use by typing a document, writing a book, writing a paper, or simply playing video games.
    Reply
  • when they make a tablet that runs Linux (centos,mageia,opensuse,fedora,debian,etc..) and not android/ios then I will jump on board
    Reply
  • alidan
    dont call an 18 year old an adult in the case of tech like this, as a fair amount of schools have tablet only books where you need one for the classes, and 18-about 25 are idiots to begin with.

    show me the adults over 30 that bought into tablets.
    Reply
  • runswindows95
    I agree with southernshark all the way. I do a lot of typing, and I see tablets as a toy. I'm right now typing this in front of dual Dell U2412M monitors in pivot, and a full sized keyboard. There is no way a tablet can replace this type of setup.
    Reply
  • edgewood112358
    otacon72I have no use for a tablet until they start running a real operating system and real software. The current generation of tablets are simply over sized cell phones.
    Android is actually a very capable OS, once rooted and with a some third party apps, at least in my opinion. With a little bit of work I can access network resources (I have a CIFS NAS set up at my house), view autodesk drawings, make quick edits to Powerpoint/word/excel documents, view my bank account info, do some online shopping, download torrents, and many more things, all without paying for a single app. There is practically nothing than I normally do on my laptop (which I see as a secondary PC- a high end desktop is still a must) that I can't do on my nexus 7. While android can still use some work, I think putting a full fledged desktop OS on a tablet would just clutter it up.
    Reply
  • Warsaw
    alidandont call an 18 year old an adult in the case of tech like this, as a fair amount of schools have tablet only books where you need one for the classes, and 18-about 25 are idiots to begin with. show me the adults over 30 that bought into tablets.If you think so highly of yourself and the studies that you require maybe you should look into not making yourself look like an idiot. C'mon, end a sentence and capitalize if you're that worried about making an insult that has no basis. I could say people 60-80 are idiots due to age, but then that would be a statement that would have no basis as well as everyone is of varying intelligence levels, it depends on the person.

    Fools will say foolish things.
    Reply
  • esrever
    alidandont call an 18 year old an adult in the case of tech like this, as a fair amount of schools have tablet only books where you need one for the classes, and 18-about 25 are idiots to begin with. show me the adults over 30 that bought into tablets.Most of the people buying ipads are middle aged people from what I see.
    Reply
  • memadmax
    I bought my wife the ipad2 when it first came out. After a month and a half of hard use, the thing has ended up just sitting around collecting dust, then after a while the account for it disbanded. Now we are thinking about trading it in for a new Wii at gamestop.
    Reply
  • killerclick
    Tablets are not laptops and they're not supposed to be laptops. When tablets replace other devices, it's only for a limited subset of functions. The fact that people can't comfortably type on a tablet isn't a fault, it's just a different type of device. No one is bitching they can't run Office on their XBox.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Different people use different devices... differently.

    Mine serves maybe a dozen different purposes:
    1- GPS navigation / logger / map
    2- browsing while not at home and either not wanting to monopolize someone else's PC, cannot trust the PC or need to look things up while repairing someone else's PC
    3- portable media player
    4- portable game console
    5- electronic book
    6- note pad
    7- flashlight
    8- SSH terminal
    9- remote control
    10- auxiliary display
    11- electronic picture frame / calendar
    12- desk clock
    13- PDA
    14- VoIP WiFi-phone

    While a smartphone can do most of the above, many of those tasks are much more pleasant and functional on 7-10" screens than a 4" one. For people who only own feature-phones or low-end smartphones, something like the Nexus7 is a nice complement.
    Reply