Tablet & EReader Use Soars Among Latinos

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (2011 Getty Images)

With holiday season shopping reaching its peak, more and more Latinos are buying iPads, Kindles and other tablet or ereader devices, according to a new study.

E-marketer research shows that 12.6 percent of Latinos used tablet devices monthly, putting them as the second highest group behind Asian-Americans. African-Americans and whites came in with just over 10 percent.

This gap will narrow as the years go by, but tablet use among Latinos is expected to keep rising with 24.6 percent of the population expected to be using these devices by 2014 alone.

“U.S. Hispanics and Asian-Americans are very eager to bridge the technological gap and they are proportionately more likely to adopt these devices than non-Hispanic whites,” said Felipe Korzenny, who led a separate tablet use study at Florida State University.

The Florida State study found that primarily English-speaking Hispanics held the highest percentage of ereader users at 20 percent and about 15 percent of primarily Spanish-speaking Hispanics used the devices. This is compared to a 14 percent ereader penetration rate among Asian-Americans, 16 percent among African-Americans and 12 percent among whites.

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Asians are however on par with Latinos in possession of tablets, with 17 percent of both groups reporting ownership.

Spanish-speaking Hispanics also have the highest rate of intention to purchase tablets at 41 percent, while whites have the lowest intention to acquire tablets at 22 percent.