Smartphones Still Outrank Tablets & E-Readers in Nielsen Survey [STATS]

By Mashable

The Nielsen Company has compiled a U.S. media landscape report from the results of its 2010 research, revealing that many of media devices that topped headlines this year, such as tablets and e-readers, aren’t necessarily on the top of many consumers’ shopping lists.

According to the report, smartphone shoppers are buying phones that use the Android, BlackBerry and Apple operating systems in about equal numbers. This departs from worldwide tendencies in 2009, when a study by Gartner research reported that Android held just a 4% market share, iPhone held 14.4% and RIM 19.9% (All three lagged far behind world leader Symbian, which held 47% ).

Nielsen’s data suggests that, at least in the U.S., a more equally divided market share is emerging. Android phones outsold iPhones for the first time in early 2010, and an earlier report from Nielsen revealed that Android increased its share of new smartphone buyers between January and November while Apple’s share remained about steady and BlackBerry’s decreased.

The past year was also a period of evolution for television. About 37% of homes that own a television also own a DVR, which is a 7% increase over last year. Despite early fears about how DVRs would affect television advertising, the devices may have had less of an impact than one would think. Forty-five percent of all recorded ads are actually viewed when played back. And only about 21% of television viewed in homes that owned DVRs was recorded.

HDTV was dethroned by 3D TV as the latest television content format as companies like ESPN, Discovery, and DirectTV announced plans to launch 3D HDTV channels this year. But unlike HDTV content, which now has about 65 million compatible devices in the U.S., Americans have not yet embraced 3D TVs. Only about 2% of respondents to an online survey said they owned a 3D TV, and only 6% considered buying one a possibility.

The story is similar for some other emerging devices that made big headlines in 2010. Despite Barnes and Noble and Amazon both declaring their respective e-readers to be the bestselling products in their histories, only 5% of about 27,000 consumers in an online survey said that they owned e-readers; and only 7% said that they would consider buying one.

Even fewer people who took the survey owned tablets, and only 6% of respondents saying they were thinking about making the purchase. As more affordable competitors to Apple’s iPad emerge, both of those numbers percentages should go up (thus the New York Times has declared a do-over of “the year of the tablet” in 2011).