Study: 2/3 of tablet users play games on the device
ComScore has released a new study of the habits of tablet users, and it's interesting to note that like smartphones, tablet devices are more often running games than not. 67% of tablet users report that they're playing games on the devices at least once in the last month, and almost a quarter of users say they're playing games every single day. Over half of tablet users are also using their devices to browse YouTube, listen to music, or read an e-magazine or ebook.
Those are all pretty expected uses of the tablet at this point (and look where the innovation in iOS 5 is happening -- right along those usage lines). But what I find most interesting about these numbers is that the iPad and tablets of its type aren't necessarily "stealing" attention from any other specific device -- it's taking time away from a number of other devices, including traditional computers, other gaming devices, and other music devices. The tablet isn't replacing anything we've got already -- it's borrowing uses from a number of other devices in our lives, and consolidating them into one screen.
That's interesting. Originally, the debate for tablet adoption was really around whether you'd need a full laptop or a tablet PC. But Apple's iPad, especially, has carved out a whole other place for the tablet, as a supplementary device for a number of functions. ComScore didn't ask about using the tablet in conjuction with other devices, but I'd suspect that as people are reading on their tablets or playing games, they're also watching TV in the background, or working on other things. How we're going to use our tablet computers isn't completely narrowed down yet (obviously, software has to catch up as well, in order to
