While casual gaming and mobile gaming have both grown in recent years, with many of us now owning a Wii, PS3 or Xbox 360 whilst playing games on our mobile phones it seems as though iPad owners in the UK toss these aside in favour of their tablet computing device.
UK copywriting firm Cooper Murphy Webb has carried out a poll amongst Britons in possession of an iPad and found that the majority (37pc) preferred their iPad over the laptop, desktop, mobile phone or dedicated games console. However, 35pc still preferred console gaming with a further 22pc choosing the PC or laptop instead.
Talk of the iPad chiefly as a device for content consumption seems to be grounded in solid figures as 31pc of iPad owners choose it over print as their preferred method of reading newspapers and magazines.
Meanwhile, 26pc still prefer their laptop or computer and 24pc like the good old ‘dead tree’ version. Interestingly 12pc prefer to catch up on the newspapers via their mobile phone.
37pc of iPad owners think it’s the tops for gaming
Now reading books is a different matter altogether. You would think that print would still win out, perhaps followed by e-reader devices. With iPad owners, however, the iPad is their e-reader device: 41pc of them prefer the iPad even over the physical printed book.
At 36pc, print comes second as preferred method of reading books but e-reader devices such as the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader are only preferred by 7pc. This probably makes sense as not many would shell out for an iPad and then buy an e-reader on top of this.
Internet browsing, on the other hand, is a more difficult topic. While the iPad is designed for a great web experience it still suffers by not having Flash as many websites use this for video or some form of interactivity.
For this reason perhaps only 38pc of owners would choose the iPad as the optimal internet browsing device while the majority – at 55pc – prefer their laptop or desktop.
The iPad might be hugely popular but are we using it as a mobile computing device? Yes, but not so much outside the home. Twenty seven percent of iPad owners never bring theirs with them when they leave the house while 35pc rarely pop it into their bag. Only 5pc of iPad owners in the UK say they always bring it with them wherever they go.
This does not mean that they don’t spend time wit it: 28pc of iPad owners spend an impressive 10 to 20 hours on their device per week while a further 24pc spend between five and 10 hours.
