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Brits Are More Likely Than Americans to Own eReaders

The media law firm Wiggin released the results of their annual tech survey this week and it revealed stats both surprising and not.

The 2012 Digital Entertainment Survey is based on a poll of  some 2,500 15 to 64-year-olds in the UK. While I don’t have the full report in front of me, a number of details have been posted in news articles and together they describe a pretty picture.

A full third of respondents own an ereader, and that is up some 21% from last year’s survey. The survey also found that 43% of respondents still read paper books and that a solid 38% (of the 66% that don’t own ereaders) don’t plan to get one.

Perhaps the most important detail was that 31% (of the 33% who own ereaders) had admitted to downloading pirated ebooks. The reason I’m focusing on that is because I want to point out the difference between this statistic and the figures I reported on yesterday.

Here we have an admission that some people have committed piracy at least once, while yesterday the El Pais journalist claimed that half of all ebooks downloaded in Spain were pirated. Do you see how one can actually be measured while the other cannot? That’s part of what bothered me about that story yesterday.

But getting back to the Wiggins report, I want you to take another look at the 33%. Did you know that it’s higher than the rate of ereader adoption here in the US? According to Pew, only about 19% of Americans own ereaders.

The UK has surged ahead in adopting digital reading, even though they got off to a later start. Interesting, no?

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Comments


I Almost Thought This Was From The Onion » All Things Expounded April 26, 2012 um 12:36 pm

[…] I saw the article headline, Brits Are More Likely to Own eReaders Than Americans, I almost thought it was a The Onion article. Eventually, though, I figured it out that they […]


fjtorres April 26, 2012 um 2:00 pm

How’s iPxxx adoption in the UK?
Just wondering…


En vrac : Gallimard, le Kindle en Chine, 3 millions en 2012, piratage, etc. April 26, 2012 um 6:06 pm

[…] Une étude annuelle menée par la société Wiggin révèle que 31% des utilisateurs (anglo-saxons) de liseuses téléchargent des livres numériques piratés ! Cette information est à prendre avec des pincettes puisque l’échantillon de 2500 personnes interrogées indique qu’un tiers de la population possède une liseuse. Inutile de vous préciser que dans les faits c’est loin d’être le cas… (source) […]


eBook Adoption Surges Ahead Among UK Students, ebrary Reports – The Digital Reader May 8, 2012 um 4:22 pm

[…] it’s interesting to note that the UK data agrees with the Wiggin survey results released a few weeks back. While the Wiggin poll covered devices, not activities, adding the 2 sets of results together show […]


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