A substantial percentage of smartphone and tablet users
consumed news on their devices in Q1 2013, according to polling by the Donald
W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. The 35-to-44 age group showed the highest
incidence of reading news on their smartphones, at 73% of users.
But, according to emarketer.com, penetration rates for every other adult age
group except those 65 and older were above 60%. Among the oldest smartphone
users, the small screen size seemed to turn them off to news consumption; only
35% read the news on their phone.
Among tablet users, the figures were similar, with the
percentage between 25 to 64 years old reading news on the devices hovering
around 67%. Interestingly, those 65 and over were much more likely to read on
the tablet compared with the smartphone, at 59%; bigger font seems to translate
to older readership.
All this mobile news reading is likely having an impact on
print news subscriptions. Although the percentage of print subscribers fell
just 2.2 percentage points between Q1 2012 and Q2 2013, to 31.1%, the drop was
especially pronounced among those age groups that showed a high incidence of
reading on their mobile devices. The biggest dip was for the 45-to-54 age
group; 34.4% had a subscription in 2012 vs. 28.0% in 2013.
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