Commentary

You Read It Here First (And Most Likely, You Read It On Your Tablet, Not Your Smartphone)

by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, February 16, 2013

That’s what Tamara Gaffney told Mobile Insider Summit attendees this morning. Gaffney, who is senior marketing manager-digital index at Adobe, said we will be “reading a press release” soon that will disclose that “tablet visits in the U.S. are about to surpass smartphones.” Hmmm, I wonder what the source of that press release might be.

Fortunately, mCommerce Daily Editor Chuck Martin was on hand to ask a hard-hitting follow-up question, pumping Gaffney to disclose a bit more on that forthcoming analysis. She answered by explaining that the tablet vs. smartphone tipping point is a function of two things: increased ownership of tablets, but equally significantly, increased usage among tablet owners.

She implied that when people have a tablet with a robust browsing experience, like a Safari browser on an iPad, that people simply “turn more pages.”

“They visit more and they just have more usage,” she shared, adding the behavior is growing both “in terms of the number of people” using tablets, but also more usage.

“The amount of usage is so much larger than a smartphone that its starting to overtake in terms of visits and usage,” she said, advising brand marketers and agencies to focus their efforts on tablets in 2013 and 2014. Beyond that, she said the future is going to be largely about the next generation of “that smart TV that’s coming next.”

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