Brits got Kindles for Christmas
More e-book readers given as prezzies than tablets
Ask punters what they got for Christmas and a rather large number of them say they got a Kindle.
Pollster YouGov asked that very question of 2000-odd UK adults and found that one in 40 of us received an e-book reader as a gift or bought one for ourselves over the festive period.
Given that the adult population of the UK is around 53m individuals, that's a whopping 1.3m e-book readers, YouGov said.
Of those, the vast majority - 92 per cent - were Kindles - 1.22m units, in other words.
That figure dwarfs tablets offered as gifts or purchased as present for oneself. YouGov's survey results suggest 640,000 tablets were handed over in fancy wrapping, 72 per cent of them - 460,800 of them iPads.
It will be interesting to see what this volume of tablets and e-book readers does to e-book sales during 2012.
YouGov collated its figures in the period 28 December 2011 to 3 January 2012. ®
COMMENTS
Kindle - less than £100
Tablets - average £400 (some exceptions I know)
I wonder if price had anything to do with it?
OK, I'll bite...
The Kindle also supports the MOBI ebook format, which isn't hard to produce or convert yourself - just install the Calibre ebook manager/converter (actually, do that whatever reader you own - :-)).
Also, "better" is such a vague and subjective term - the Kobo is a fine machine (and I considered it), but in the end, I think the Kindle nudges it if you're an Amazon regular. (I also like my Kindle's hardware keypad.) I don't buy many ebooks, though - Calibre and the likes of Project Gutenberg help see to that...
But if you're happy with the Kobo, good for you - horses for courses and all that :-)
And yet...
...while sitting in the park under the biggest light source I know, a Kindle beats the pants off an iPhone.
I also find it easier to switch on a bedside light than switch off the sun, for some reason.
It's Amazing!
How all you people could have remembered one small post that I made here saying thanks-but-no-thanks to e-books and their readers. I know it seems unlikely, even impossible, that people should have gone to the trouble of finding out who I am, and where I live (El Reg security issue here?), but it looks like they did, and wow! Just what I wanted! No kindles for Christmas.
What I'm a lot less happy about is that none of you sent the real books I asked for...
Exactly.
This article is kind of like saying "More chocolate than Kindles purchased at Xmas!"
