Mediarender

Pew Research Center together with The Economist Group has just released an interesting report on tablet usage in the US. The numbers are encouraging for the publishers. Some takeways:

As anticipated, news consumption on tablets is very strong:

Consuming news (everything from the latest headlines to in-depth articles and commentary) ranks as one of the most popular activities on the tablet, about as popular as sending and receiving email (54% email daily on their tablet), and more popular than social networking (39%), gaming (30%), reading books (17%) or watching movies and videos (13%). The only activity that people said they were more likely to do on their tablet computer daily is browse the web generally (67%).

Also interesting is that web browser is still some way ahead as the primary way of reading news. With rise of HTML5, the gap between browser usage and apps is only likely to increase. 

That said, those getting their news through apps are the most intense tablet users. As the article notes:

Those tablet news users who primarily use apps for news are the most avid consumers of news on tablets. They consume news more heavily, and in more different ways. They also report higher levels of enjoyment and learning from their news experience.

On the monetization side, however, there is still a large dose of reluctance to pay directly for tablet-native content. So it might still be some time before tablet apps are considered to be a substantial revenue stream for publishers. Ad revenue growth can of course continue to benefit from the tablet platform. 

At this point just 14% of tablet news users have paid directly to access news on their tablet. Another 23% get digital access of some kind through a print newspaper or magazine subscription. Still, cost is a factor, even among this heavy news consuming population. Of those who haven’t paid directly, just 21% say they would be willing to spend $5 per month if that were the only way to access their favorite source on the tablet. And of those who have news apps, fully 83% say that being free or low cost was a major factor in their decision about what to download.