Catching up on news is among the most popular activities for tablet computer owners, but most are not willing to pay for it, according to a study published yesterday.
The joint study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Economist Group brings unwelcome news for media outlets hoping to bolster flagging print revenue with paid digital news content.
Eleven percent of US adults now own a tablet computer such as Apple’s iPad or some other device, according to the study.
Photo: Reuters
Seventy-seven percent of 1,159 US tablet owners surveyed said they use their tablet every day, spending an average of about 90 minutes on the device.
Sixty-seven percent said they use their tablet daily to surf the Web, 54 percent said they use it to send and receive e-mail and 53 percent said they use it to get news.
Thirty-nine percent said they use their tablet daily for social networking, 30 percent for gaming, 17 percent for reading books and 13 percent for watching movies and videos.
However, while more than half of tablet owners were using the devices daily to get news, just 14 percent said they have paid directly for content, the study found.
Another 23 percent have a subscription to a print newspaper or magazine that includes digital access.
Twenty-one percent of the tablet news consumers who haven’t paid directly for news said they would be willing to spend US$5 a month if that were the only way to access their favorite news source on the tablet.
“When it was launched, many observers believed that the tablet might help change the experience of news consumers and the economic ground rules of digital news consumption,” the study’s authors said.
“That belief was based on the sense that people would consume information on tablets largely through special applications or apps ... which news organizations might be able to charge for,” they said.
“If news organizations are more successful at finding a way to reap revenue in the tablet environment than they have on the Internet more broadly, the movement toward tablet consumption could be quite promising,” the study’s authors said.
“The likelihood of that, though, is uncertain at best,” they added.
“And the further movement away from print and television suggests that news companies have little time to find that new economic model before the revenue from their legacy platforms completely dries up,” it said.
The study was conducted between July 15 and July 30 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure