We've all seen them sitting in Starbucks and lounging on park benches. They're casually swiping their fingers on high resolution screens and using specialized styluses to create detailed graphics and notes. You won't see them toting a New York Times or a planner. They have eschewed such paper-based products and deemed them "oh-so-twentieth century." They are the infamous, eco-friendly, and tech-savvy tablet user.
We're seeing more and more tablet users crop up in our day-to-day lives. According to the Pew Research Center, 11% of the U.S. adult population owns a tablet--a staggering statistic for a product category that only debuted less than two years ago. This means more than one out of every ten people owns a tablet, and the market is only growing.
So, who is the tablet user? What are they doing on their devices? Let's find out.
Demographically, tablet users are most likely to have graduated college, earn a family income of $75,000 or more, be employed full time, and be between the ages of 30 and 49. These numbers make sense. This demographic has the expendable income necessary to invest in this new technology.
As the product category develops and matures, however, I predict that these numbers will change. Just as the cell phone has almost subsumed the home phone, the tablet will eventually become powerful enough to take the place of the laptop or desktop computer. Whether this switchover will occur two years from now or ten is yet to be seen, but you can expect this demographic information to change drastically as the market matures. As more and more mobile companies develop tablet products, they will be targeted to appeal to a younger and less affluent audience.
Tablet users spend an average of one hour and thirty-five minutes on their devices daily and most users check their email and read news on their devices on a daily basis. What do these numbers mean? Tablet users are engaging with content on their devices in a meaningful way. Of tablet users who read news on their devices, 53% of users find that it is "easier to learn new things," 46% "enjoy the news more," and 22% believe that the "news is worth more." Users find the exact same content to be more valuable simply because it is accessed through a tablet. Why? Well, tablets display visually appealing content that can be accessed through tactile and intuitive gestures--making the information easier to digest. Also, because this technology is fairly new, and because of the smaller screen sizes of most tablets, multitasking on these devices is still not well developed as on more traditional laptops and desktops. Users are forced to focus on one thing at a time and truly engage with the information that is being delivered to them.
What does this mean for your company? Well, if you're interested in making sure that your users are interacting meaningfully with your website's content, it means only one thing: develop. Unfortunately, most traditional websites do not translate well on mobile devices. (For more information about creating a mobile-friendly website click here.) Also, depending on how you'd like your user to interact with your brand, you might want to develop a mobile application (read more here). Whatever your solution, the time to get in the mobile game is now.