1 in 3 choose iPad over TV

1 in 3 choose iPad over TV, said the headline at the CNN website recently. I know headlines have to be short and grab people's attention, but should this be at the expense of being misleading? It implies that 1 in 3 of the general population chooses the iPad over TV, but it was actually a survey of tablet users and not the general public. What's more, it wasn't even a survey of iPad owners and it was a survey of tablet users. Given the huge market share of Apple's iPad compared to Android devices, the vast majority of tablet owners in the survey probably were iPad owners, but not all of them.

So the headline isn't quite right and something like "1 in 3 tablet owners prefer it to TV" would be more accurate.

It's interesting to look at tablet usage though and the original source is a Google Mobile Ads blog. There is a PDF containing lots of slides that is worth viewing. When looking at the tablet usage chart it says that 52% of people spend more time on their tablet each day than listening to the radio. Well I spend more time sitting on the toilet than listening to radio. I just don't listen to it, so what does that prove?

I wonder what the results would be if you surveyed console owners - Xbox and Playstation. I don't know, but I suspect that the results might be similar. Do gamers spend more time on their console than reading a paper book or listening to the radio? It wouldn't be surprising. What if the survey was of Amazon Kindle owners? Would it still say 59% prefer it to reading a paper book or that 52% prefer it to the radio, and so on?

Whenever something new comes along no matter how much time we spend using it, there is less time for something else. As tablet ownership grows we'll spend less time doing other things and that's because there are only 24 hours in the day. We have to cut down on something else to focus our attention on the tablet.