BY LISA BRYAN - AT NOVEMBER 01, 2015
The tablet market has been expanding - with 45 percent of U.S. adults saying they own a tablet computer, up from four percent in 2010 - but growth has cooled over the past two years, Pew researchers found.
The surveys found that smartphone ownership for the 18-49 demo and those in higher income brackets are close to "saturation adoption" (approaching nine out of 10), but found no ownership differences by race or ethnic group.
Remember the iPod? The survey finds that ownership of MP3 players such as Apple's iPod has stayed pretty much the same since 2013: 40 percent today vs. 43 percent then.
"These changes in device ownership are all taking place in a world where smartphones are transforming into all-purpose devices that perform numerous same functions of specialized technology, such as music players, e-book readers or even gaming devices".
"These data suggest how the rise of smartphones has been a major story in the universe of connected gadgetry", Lee Rainie, Director of Internet, Science and Technology Research at Pew Research Center, explains in the new report.
The figures are significant since in 2011 the smartphone figure was 35 percent and the tablet figure was nearly non-existent. In total, 73% of US adults own a desktop or laptop computer, down from 80 percent in 2012.
Curiously, just around 40 percent of adults say they own an MP3 player, and that figure hasn't really changed since 2008.
Pew Research Center has published a wide-ranging survey on device ownership amongst American adults, revealing detailed demographic breakdowns of a variety of different electronic gadgets which can play video games.
A few 19 percent of adults report owning an e-reader, a sizable drop from early 2014, when 32 percent of adults owned this type of device.
The results are based on questions asked during telephone interviews conducted in English and Spanish between March 17 and April 12, 2015 among a national sample of 1,907 adults (age 18 and older). The margin of error for the first survey was plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.