The Rise & Rise Of Tablet Impressions

When [Floyd] had tired of official reports, memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one, he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers. He knew the codes of the more important ones by heart and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.

Each had its own two-digit reference. When he punched that, a postage-sized rectangle would expand till it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he finished he could flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.- 2001 A Space Odyssey- Arthur C Clarke When I first read this classic I thought "Did he actually think it was possible?" and my thoughts were quashed when I chanced upon "The only thing that we can be sure of the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic" The year 2012 saw a phenomenal rise in the tablet impressions across the world and it was the same for us on the InMobi network. From being an author's imagination to being an eclectic 'elite' device the tablet is now reaching the masses and is fast becoming an important screen for multi-device users.

Figure 1: Tablet impressions

For most of the our generation the television was the first screen followed by desktop/laptop; in that vein the tablet is the closest hand-held prototype of these original screens; this means the user actually feels more at home and engages actively on these devices. The rise of tablet impressions (Figure 1) over the past year clearly indicates that the appetite is on the rise. Like with most new technologies, the USA leads the tablets market with Apple as the undisputed leader. That said, competition is heating up with new launches happening every quarter and this means better design and an even improved user experience in the near future.

Figure 2: Tablet Manufacturers

Figure 3: Top 5 countries in terms of Tablet usage

Large screens, portability, accelerometer combined with increasing amounts of time spent on tablets and dual screening, make tablets an excellent channel for advertisers to connect with their target audiences at the right times. With increase in tablet penetration with each passing quarter we are yet to witness tablets' full potential. Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in mans quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites *For more info about tablet usage and media consumption on tablets, please download our white papers here. Do drop into our insights page for regular references to classic sci-fi works and the post-pc era world! [1] Popova Maria, Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Future in 1964, Gets It Oddly Right, URL: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/09/30/arthur-c-clarke-the-future-1964/ , September, 2012