dailylicious!
An overwhelming majority of Americans using tablets and smartphones read news from websites as opposed to apps. The majority of those who prefer using apps are iPad users while those who prefer the web are split nearly equally between iOS and Android. Those who use apps read more news, are more engaged, more involved, and more willing to pay for news as opposed to web users.
Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, told me the company had done its own tests on its Kindle e-readers and Fire tablets to help hasten the changes. “We’ve done experiments,” he said. “We loaded a plane with Kindles.”
I asked what happened in the experiments. He looked at me as if I were asking the dumbest question he had ever heard. “Everybody landed,” he said. “It wasn’t a problem.”
Nick Bilton in his drive to investigate the truth whether personal electronic devices such as the Kindle readers and iPads actually affect in-flight navigation. Just search for “Nick Bilton flight” on Google for a history of his crusade.
Pingdom published some stats on tablet use around the world. Among its findings is the lack of dominance of the iPad in Indonesia where it has only 55% tablet share ahead of Android tablets at 44%. The data relates to the use of tablets on the web, not sales. You can read the rest of the report on Pingdom’s website.
Microsoft announced its own brand of tablets on Monday in Los Angeles. Called the Microsoft Surface, it comes in two variants, one running Windows RT, powered by an ARM processor, another running the full Windows 8 Pro environment with an Intel processor on board. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Microsoft Surface was a touchscreen table (yes, table) which was released in 2007. The current version of that table has been renamed PixelSense.
How is the Surface different from the iPad? To begin with, it has a built in kickstand, a 10.6 inch high definition screen with a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, and has a Windows logo on it (some people might miss this fact, really). It also has a USB and microSD ports as well as digital video connectors. Microsoft showed off the accompanying screen cover which doubles as an integrated keyboard and touchpad as well as a pen for the Pro version. Surface for RT will come in 32 and 64 GB versions while the Pro model gets a 64 and 128 GB options.
With Surface, Microsoft has decided to enter the hardware space for personal computers and compete with its own hardware partners in delivering devices running Windows 8. Previously it was more than happy to deliver just the software while letting partners figure out hardware manufacturing and assembly, but ever since the tablet market ran away without caring about Windows, Microsoft probably felt that it needed to rectify the situation.
With Amazon’s Kindle Fire leading the charge for sales of non-iPad tablets, you probably expect that there would be some significant inroads made by the Fire when it comes to accessing the internet, but apparently people barely use their non-iPad tablets to access the web. Mobile ad company Chitika discovered that when it comes to serving advertising units among tablets, the iPads make up nearly 95% of ad impressions with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and Asus Transformer Prime each notching just over one percent of ads on tablets.
