Statistics

U.S. trade publishers are seeing huge growth in English language eBook sales to other countries. According to a new report from the Association of American Publishers, eBook net sales revenue for 2011 was $21.5 million, which was up 332.6% from 2010. The press release explains more: “…this represents 3.4 million eBook units sold in 2011, up 303.3 %. As comparison, print formats (Hardcover, Paperback and Mass Market Paperback) increased 2.3% to $335.9 million in 2011.” In 2011, eBook sales grew 218.8% in Continental Europe, 1316.8% in the UK, 201.6% in Latin America and 636.8% in Africa.

Overall, U.S. publishers earned a net sales revenue of $357.4 million from export sales in 2011, for both print and eBook titles. This was a 7.2% increase from $333.3 million the net sales revenue earned in 2010.

 

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According to Nielsen, the average number of apps per smartphone has jumped 28 percent from 32 apps to 41.2012 apps over the past year. In addition, over the last year only 40 percent of mobile phones users in the U.S. had smartphones and today 50 percent of mobile subscribers have a smartphone. The number continues to grow.

The research firm also reported that app usage among Android and iOS users has more than doubled over the last year, accounting for more than 88 percent of app downloads in the last month.

The leading apps continue to lead, with Facebook, YouTube, Android Market, Google Search and Gmail leading the pack. Here is more from the Nielsen blog: “…smartphone owners spend just about the same amount of time on apps each day (37 minutes a day in 2011 compared to 39 minutes today). Finally, privacy continues to be a concern with the vast majority (70% in 2011 and 73% in 2012) expressing concern over personal data collection and 55 percent wary of sharing information about their location via smartphone apps.”

The Pew Research Center regularly pools US consumers on all sorts of things from gadgets to buying habits. One recent poll involved app buying habits of smartphone and tablet owner. It turns out that watching videos isn’t the only activity that shifted from TVs to tablets.

The survey results found that parents who owned tablets (or a smartphone) were more likely to download apps for use by a kid (57% vs 16%). Parents were also more likely overall to download apps when compared to non-parents (84% vs 69%). Read more

According to a new report from Bowker Market Research, tablet usage more than doubled its market share among British adult readers of eBooks between February 2011 and March 2012. But while tablet adoption is on the rise among these readers in Britain, only 12 percent of the population, report using these devices most often.

Instead, the Understanding the Digital Consumer project report found that these readers prefer to read on Kindle devices, and 40 percent of those surveyed said they use the Kindle most often.

eBook sales are also up among British adult readers. In fact, the number of British adults who have bought an eBook since February 2011 has increased almost three-fold. In addition, 31 percent of those readers said that they are likely to buy an eBook in the next six months. Read more

Remember that report from Flurry a few weeks back about iTunes being more profitable than Google Play or Amazon Appstore? That’s not what one app developer is reporting.

Earlier this week TinyCo, a developer with games in all 3 app stores, analyzed some data from one of their games and posted it on their blog. They found that the average user who got Tiny Village in the Amazon Appstore spent more than one who bought the app in iTunes – 1.8 times as much, in fact – as well as spending nearly 3 times as much as the average Google Play user. Read more

According to a new report from Pew Research, in a survey done in February 2012, 21% of adults in the U.S. said that they had read an eBook in the last year. This was up from the 17% of adults who had reported doing so in December 2011.

The report concludes that the December 2011 holiday season in which many consumers received an eReader as a gift, has led to an increase in eBook adoption. Pew Research has more: “During that period, ownership of an e-book reader or a tablet each increased to 19% of adults, compared to 10% for each device in mid-December.”

According to the research, the average eBook reader has read 24 books in the past 12 months, while those readers who don’t read eBooks average 15 books in the past year. The report also points out that 72% of American adults had read a print book in the past year, and 11% listened to an audiobook during the same time period.

According to new research from Change Wave Research, 82% of new iPad owners said that they were very satisfied with the new iPad. Sixteen percent said that they were somewhat satisfied. Only 2% are somewhat unsatisfied and no one that was surveyed said that they were very unsatisfied.

According to the survey, which includes responses from 200 new iPad owners, 75% of respondents said that the new high res retina display is what they like best about the new device. Long battery life, 4G LTE capability and the faster processor are also features that new owners like about the new device. Read more

The American Association of Publishers debuted a new monthly report in January and the news is good.

Sales of adult eBook titles rose 49.4 percent in January ($99.5 million vs $66.6m), while eBook sales in the children & young adult segment shot up 475 percent over last year ($22.6m vs $3.9m). eBooks made up 17.5% of the children trade segment, and a startling 31 percent of the adult trade segment. The trade market as a whole also grew to $503.5 million in January, up significantly from $396 million in January 2011.

The new report, dubbed Monthly StatShot, includes sales data from 1,149 publishers. This is a significant improvement over the old report, which was based on sales figures reported by just over 100 reporting companies with only a couple dozen contributing to most of the categories. On a related note, the AAP has also collected sales figures dating back at least a year for all participating publishers, which means year vs year comparisons have been kept accurate.

Readers in France and Japan are less likely than readers in Australia, India, the U.K. and the U.S. to read eBooks, according to Bowker Market Research’s Global eBook Monitor study. In France, only five percent of respondents and in Japan only eight percent of respondents had purchased an eBook.

In the study, Bowker looked at consumer attitudes about eBooks among the online population of ten countries and found that more than 20 percent of respondents reported purchasing eBooks in the six months before doing the survey. Despite some survey respondents not buying eBooks, it is pretty widely known that you can. Eighty percent of respondents from across all of the countries know that books are available for download. Read more

Epub and Kindle appear to be taking over the eBook world, but that’s not what is happening everywhere. O’Reilly Media recently surveyed their customers about their reading habits, and some startling details have been uncovered.

O’Reilly tracks downloads, but since their eBooks are DRM free they cannot get any more info than that. So in order to find out exactly how their eBooks are being used, O’Reilly ran a short survey asking customers what they device they read on and what format they preferred. Read more