American Tablet Owners Buy Entertainment; Europeans Buy News

Getting a nice, shiny new iPad tomorrow? If you buy content to consume on it, chances are it will be music, books or movies, if you’re in the US. Those were the most popular purchases according to new stats from Nielsen. But if you’re European, you’ll pay for news over all of those. Nielsen shared the […]

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Getting a nice, shiny new iPad tomorrow? If you buy content to consume on it, chances are it will be music, books or movies, if you’re in the US. Those were the most popular purchases according to new stats from Nielsen. But if you’re European, you’ll pay for news over all of those.

Nielsen shared the stats in a post today, which featured this chart:

Nielsen Tablet Owners Paid Content

Here’s the chart above broken down by country:

US
  1. Music: 62%
  2. Books: 58%
  3. Movies: 51%
  4. Magazine: 41%

    TV: 41%
  5. Radio: 27%
  6. Sports: 22%
  7. News: 19%
Italy
  1. News: 44%
  2. Books: 26%
  3. Movies: 23%
  4. Music: 20%
  5. Sports: 19%
  6. Magazines: 16%
  7. TV: 10%
  8. Radio: 7%
UK
  1. News: 19%

    Music: 19%
  2. Books: 10%
  3. Movies: 9%
  4. TV: 8%
  5. Sports: 7%
  6. Magazines: 6%

    Radio: 6%
Germany
  1. News: 15%
  2. Music: 9%
  3. Books: 7%
  4. Movies: 6%

    Magazines: 6%
  5. TV: 4%

    Sports: 4%
  6. Radio: 2%

As you can see, news is the leading content category purchased on tablets in Italy, Germany and tied for first in the United Kingdom. In the US, news is last among the eight categories of content purchased.

The post doesn’t say more about how the survey was conducted, but Nielsen told me:

The data in this post comes from our Q4 2011 Mobile Connected Devices insights. Connected device owners are defined as those who have a tablet, eReader, smartphone, or other mobile connected device. Sample counts for tablet owners in each country are below:

  • Germany (n=591)
  • UK (n=593)
  • Italy (n=245)
  • US (n=1,695)

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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