When the iPad was released, everybody said e-readers like Amazon's Kindle were going to be dead in the water because it was a single-purpose device unlike a tablet. Boy were they wrong. A new Pew Research report shows e-readers taking the lead over tablets in growth.
Looking at the Pew Research report, e-reader ownership within the last six months in the U.S. has doubled from six percent to 12 percent whereas tablet growth grew a measly three percent in the same period.
I guess people do love their sun-friendly E Ink displays after all! It also doesn't hurt that Amazon recently added a cheaper ad-supported Kindle and Barnes & Noble gave the Nook an upgrade with a touchscreen E Ink display.
It's good to see that e-readers haven't gone the way of the dodo yet. But as TechCrunch notes, it's going to become harder to measure side-by-side growth because e-reader/tablet hybrids like the Nook Color are blurring the lines of what is and isn't an e-reader, tablet or both.
Pew Research, via TechCrunch
