Tablets are entertainment devices? Well, of course they are: from Angry Birds to Netflix to Spotify, people aren’t just using these devices for work.
But research firm Gartner has been putting some figures to this through a survey of tablet owners in the US, UK and Australia, finding that 50% of their ‘device screen time’ – so all devices, not just their tablets – is spent on entertainment: games, books, live TV and music/radio.
The study claims that respondents spend on average four hours a day using tablets, smartphones and PCs, with owners of Apple and Samsung tablets overindexing (by 30 minutes a day) on the time they spend on entertainment on those screens.
Gartner thinks there is scope for tablet makers to start working the entertainment niches, pitching devices as the best for playing games, watching films or listening to music.
The company also predicts a boom in “basic” tablets (i.e. cheaper Android devices, suggesting that they’ll account for nearly 47% of new tablet shipments this year. “Tablet vendors can no longer focus exclusively on early adopters,” says Gartner’s Meike Escherich.
And this combination of entertainment and basic tablets will soon be on the shelves of Tesco in the UK: it’s holding an event on 23 September to unveil its new Hudl model, which is expected to run Android and could cost as little as £99.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…