TORONTO – More than 42 per cent of anglophone Canadians now own a tablet and most are increasingly choosing one of Apple’s iPads, suggests a report by the Media Technology Monitor.
Tablet ownership spiked by about 66 per cent between 2012 and 2013, according to the results of a MTM survey conducted with 4,009 Canadians between Oct. 7 and Dec. 1 of last year.
In the fall of 2012, about one in four anglophone Canadians told pollsters they had one of the gadgets, while a similar survey conducted in the fall of 2011 found just one in 10 were tablet owners.
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Apple’s iPads account for about two-thirds of the tablets Canadians own, MTM’s newest report suggests, while BlackBerry’s PlayBook and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab devices have a 10 per cent share of the market each. Apple’s hold of the market has consistently grown in MTM’s polls while the other brands have stagnated.
The polling numbers also seem to suggest that while tablets are now more commonly found in Canadian households they’re being used a little less often.
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In the spring of 2011, 46 per cent of tablet owners said they used their tech toy several times a day, 25 per cent said they used it at least once a day, and 16 per cent said they used it once a week.
Last spring, only 38 per cent were using theirs several times a day, 24 per cent said it turned on at least once a day, and nine per cent said they picked it up once a week at least.
But iPad users appear to engage much more with their tablets.
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In the most recent MTM poll, about 45 per cent of the iPad owners said they used their tablets several times daily, versus just 28 per cent of the Samsung tablet users and 23 per cent of PlayBook users.
Overall, the tablet users typically said they used their device to go online (88 per cent), browse the web (80 per cent) and use email (65 per cent). About half said they used their tablet for social networking, watching video and reading news.
Not surprisingly, MTM found consumers with higher incomes were far more likely to have bought a tablet. Almost 80 per cent of anglophone consumers with a household income above $200,000 had a tablet, as did 66 per cent of those with a household income between $150,000 and $199,999.
The results of the telephone survey, conducted by Forum Research, are considered accurate within 1.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
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