Tablet ownership in U.S. jumps 19% over X-mas

PanARMENIAN.Net - Roughly ten percent of Americans got a tablet for Christmas, according to figures published by the Pew Research Center. In mid-December, 10% of U.S adults owned a tablet computer. Now, that figure has jumped to 19%, which suggests that ownership doubled in a month. Almost exactly the same numbers were also reported for e-readers.

The Kindle likely has a lot to do with this. The Kindle Fire is the first non-iPad tablet that has sold in meaningful quantities (Amazon hasn’t broken out individual numbers, but says it was selling a million Kindles of all kinds per week throughout December). And then there’s the iPad, the sales numbers for which will be revealed at tomorrow’s earnings call.

These new tablets are surely cutting into low-end PC sales, with people realizing that a tablet can do pretty much everything they need a computer for, and also let them read books and watch movies all day long, without plugging in, Wired.com reported.