Society & Culture - Posted by Nathan Hurst-Missouri on Monday, June 4, 2012 13:36 - 5 Comments 
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(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...Mobile slow to replace print newspapers
"Forty percent of mobile device users indicated in our survey that they still subscribe to printed newspapers and news magazines. This percentage was almost identical for non-users of mobile devices," says Roger Fidler, the program director for digital publishing at RJI. (Credit: Brendan Lynch/Flickr)
U. MISSOURI (US) — Mobile news products do not appear to be replacing printed newspapers as quickly as was earlier predicted, a new survey shows.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Two-thirds of US adults now use at least one mobile media device in their daily lives, according to the survey recently conducted by the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the University of Missouri.
News consumption ranks fourth among reasons people use mobile devices, behind interpersonal communications, entertainment, and Internet usage for information not provided by news organizations, the survey shows.
“The increased use of mobile devices does not yet appear to have accelerated the switch from print to digital news consumption as earlier surveys suggested,” says Roger Fidler, the program director for digital publishing at RJI. “Forty percent of mobile device users indicated in our survey that they still subscribe to printed newspapers and news magazines. This percentage was almost identical for non-users of mobile devices.”
Smartphones and large media tablets are the two most popular devices for consuming news, according to a new survey that also finds Apple is dominating the large tablet market, with more than 88 percent of large tablet users owning an iPad, while Amazon is dominating the small tablet and e-reader markets. (Credit: Fredrik Matheson/Flickr)
Straight from the Source
The RJI survey interviewed more than 1,000 randomly selected respondents. The survey divided mobile media devices into four categories: large tablets, small tablets, e-readers, and smart phones.
More than 21 percent of the respondents said they now use large tablets, a category of mobile devices that entered the market just two years ago. Results showed that Apple is dominating the large tablet market, with more than 88 percent of large tablet users owning an iPad, while Amazon is dominating the small tablet and e-reader markets.
The survey also showed that smartphones and large media tablets are the two most popular devices for consuming news. Fidler says that news organizations should consider these numbers when targeting their audiences.
“Amazon and Apple have built quite a bit of brand loyalty from their customers,” Fidler says. “Forty-four percent of Apple iPhone owners also own large media tablets, 96 percent of which are iPads. This obviously poses a significant challenge for publishers and advertisers who are trying to circumvent Apple by focusing their attention on mobile devices with the Android operating system.
“These results suggest that to reach the highest percentage of smartphone and large media tablet owners, news organizations must make their content available on Apple iPhones and iPads.”
Concerning Amazon, the RJI survey showed 22 percent of Kindle e-reader owners also own a small media tablet, of which 71 percent were Kindle Fire tablets, while only 14 percent owned Barnes & Noble Nook tablets.
The survey also found that Apple iPhone and iPad owners tended to be somewhat older and have significantly higher household incomes than owners of smart phones and large media tablets powered by Google’s Android operating system.
More news from the University of Missouri: http://munews.missouri.edu/
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5 Comments
> The survey also found that Apple iPhone and iPad owners tended to be somewhat older and have significantly higher household incomes than owners of smart phones and large media tablets powered by Google’s Android operating system.
I’d guess that number of young people using iPhones and iPads will outweigh older.
I believe we’re at least at the beggining of transition to mobile/tablet publishing. Clearly there are many devices out there, ecosystems were build and competition between players lowerd the price. But research sais in 3-4 years 75% of people in developed countries will have tablet device. To me that will mark end of paper, couse people will cary tablets with them like phones today.
Anyway, I’m very happy to be a part of this revolution :)
emc2
Journalists are becoming an extinct species. Soon, most of the news that they’re currently giving away will be worth just that, nothing. At that point, the internet may start to get boring (you can only facebook and youtube so much.) Then, perhaps people will be willing to pay for news, or the network providers may have to pay the cost of news, to justify their high access fees.
Rob N
I have an iPad and try to use the online service, in fact, not long after my newspaper offered a digital-only subscription, I dropped the paper copy. However, I have been quite disappointed – their iPad is terribly slow, doesn’t allow subscribers to comment, links don’t work, and it doesn’t include several sections, like the comics and weather. They also have a website which works well, but for some reason if you’re on an iPad they redirect you to a less-functional version of the website which has the same flaws as the app.
So until the newspaper companies take tablets seriously, I think there will be slow adaptation rates.
Unfortunatelly publishers for now treat iPad publishing as 1:1 mirror to print edition. We had HTML magazines for over 4 months now, but enabled PDFs last month – since than more than 80% of our new clients use PDFs as a way to publish they magazine apps.
I believe that will change over time, but for now we’re in “transition” period.
I haven’t picked up a paper version of a newspaper in almost twenty years. I’ve been using the web based news sources since then.
And yes, I view most on the web on my laptop which is in fact a mobile device.