• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, October 7, 2010

Amid interest in a new generation of mobile devices, including e-readers and tablet computers, a number of research outfits are rushing to the market with new surveys describing the characteristics of device owners, as well as their habits in media consumption.

No surprise -- these studies all indicate that people who buy these devices are an attractive target audience, combining heavy media consumption with affluence and "early adopter" habits.

One new study from Scarborough Research includes the results of a survey of people who already own or plan to purchase an e-reader device, such as Amazon's Kindle, designed specifically for text consumption, as opposed to the more wide-ranging applications of Apple's iPad.

As expected, they indexed significantly higher in newspaper consumption, with 78% of adults in e-reader households reading a newspaper in the past week, either print or online -- compared to 71% of households in the non-e-reader category.

Breaking the data down into online and print, 41% of e-reader adults reported visiting a newspaper Web site in the last 30 days, compared to 27% of adults who don't own or plan to buy an e-reader. Seventy-one percent in the e-reader category had read a print newspaper in the last week, compared to 65% in the non-e-reader category.

A separate survey of 1,816 U.S. adults conducted Sept. 17-23 by the Harrison Group on behalf of Zinio, the digital magazine publisher, found that consumers who own tablet computers (including the iPad) or e-readers spend 50% more time reading magazines, on average, than people who don't own such a device.

It's not clear whether the extra time spent reading magazines occurred on the e-readers or tablet computers. But 73% of respondents who own a device said they believe content downloaded on one digital platform should be available to them on other platforms -- for example, both online via a desktop and mobile via smartphone.

Last week, Nielsen released the results of a survey of 5,000 consumers that own an e-reader, netbook, tablet computer like Apple's iPad or smartphone. Nielsen found that e-reader owners tend to be younger, male and affluent, although proportions varied between devices.

Among consumers that owned an iPad, 65% were male compared to 52% for iPhone owners, 52% for Amazon's Kindle, and 62% for Sony PlayStation Portable. Some 63% of iPad owners were under the age of 35, compared to 44% for iPhone, 47% for Kindle and 68% for Sony PSP.

People who own an iPad are also more likely to be receptive to advertising, with 35% saying they "enjoy viewing ads" on their iPads, compared to just 17% for all devices. Fifty-seven percent say they don't mind advertising, if it means they get content for free.

On Wednesday, GfK MRI announced that it will begin full cross-platform measurement of magazine readership in 2011, covering all digital platforms, including Web sites, digital editions received via email, smartphone apps, e-readers and tablets.