Which device do you read your ebooks?
Safari Books online ( A website that specialises in technical ebooks) have been running a small survey to find out which of a range of devices their customers use to read ebooks on. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the type of ebooks that Safari sell, the winner by quite a margin is the iPad.
The survey is still going on, but the results so far are rather pursuasive:
- iPad: 40.37%
- Kindle: 12.39%
- Nook: 2.21%
- Smart Phone: 17.91%
- Desktop/Laptop: 23.07%
- None: 0.25%
- Other: 3.8%
I find this result logical because reading text books is not really an enjoyable or easy experience on an average ereader – this is my own view, of course – so any device that offers a large screen, colour, portability and ease of use is obviously the device of choice for such reading matter.
And whatever one feels about the iPad as an ereader, it has a number of other very useful functions that the average ereader lacks – sending and receiving emails for a lot of professional people being an important one.
Thus, the iPad is the device that come out on top as it is establishing itself as the device of choice for a lot of professionals.
Also interesting is the rating of the Kindle (a dedicated monochrome ereader), on the face of it one would expect the Nook to be the second most popular device as it offers a colour screen. This must be because Amazon have an enormous selection of all manner of technical ebooks.
Simple really.
But having said that, it is still interesting to see how the market breaks down into user groups. I suspect if one ran the same survey on a website that dealt in novels, the results would be the other way up, i.e the dedicated ereaders would be the device of choice, and the iPad and computer would be at the bottom of the table. As with everything, it is a case of the most appropriate device for the job in hand.
Link: http://www.safaribooksonline.com
Share with us:
Do you have any views on this? Do share them with us here.