Goin' Mobile - Device Differentiation

I've mentioned in a few previous posts that studies are starting to show that mobile device users are starting to differentiate their use and consumption patterns based on the characteristics of the particular mobile devices being used.  A newly released industry analysis b y Adobe Digital Index is providing more insight and support for mobile differentiation.

   To start, the study supports the rapid expansion of mobile and tablet diffusion and use.  The explosion in tablets and their use has been phenomenal - the number of tablets shipped worldwide more than doubled over the last twelve months.  More importantly, in their three years in the market, tablets are already generating more online traffic than smartphones (on a global basis).  A large part of that is the finding that people tend to visit 70% more pages when browsing the internet on tablets than when the browse on their smartphones.  Both tablets and smartphones are each closing in on accounting for 10% of all page views through browsers.

  Traffic using mobile apps is also booming.  In what is a good sign for print media, there was a 200% growth in readers of digital publishing apps from August 2012 to February 2013.  More readers of digital magazines access through tablets than all other media combined.  And tablet use tends to be more frequent and more in-depth than smartphone use.  Specifically, compared to smartphone usage, tablet users open digital publication apps twice as often per month, and read three times as many pages per session.  Tablets account for three-fourths of all online reading sessions.
  Online video use is rapidly going mobile, although the bulk of online video viewing occurs on PCs, or through devices connected to TV sets.  Still, mobile video consumption tripled over the last year, and now accounts for over 10% of all online video viewing.  Here again, despite the much higher penetration rates for smartphones, tablets account for most of the mobile digital video consumption.
  On the retail side, the study found that tablet users are a lot like PC users - they use their devices to compare products and make online purchases.  In contrast, smartphones are used more for quick reference - for price checks, locating stores, restaurants, etc.

Sources - Smartphones and Tablets, Though Mobile, Require Separate Ad Approaches,  Research Brief
State of Mobile Benchmark, Adobe Digital Index research report