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Reading on mobile devices increasing

It probably doesn't shock you that everyone uses mobile devices for just about everything these days. But do you know how many of you use mobile devices for reading news? The numbers might surprise you.
Written by Ken Hess, Contributor
The New INFOSLAB: The Decision Device and News Your Way

Perusing my reader statistics is a daily task that I, until recently, took somewhat lightly. I read the stats and evaluated which of my articles you find most interesting. I also was bemused by which articles still carry significant traffic, even months after the initial posting. But, there were two reader statistics that I, for some reason, always overlooked: Mobile and Tablet. I guess I had never really focused on the details and breakdowns of the traffic hitting my posts. A few days ago, I noticed. I noticed an interesting trend that surprised me and thought that it might have the same effect on you.

Readers, such as yourself, read news on their mobile phones. Tablets are growing in popularity too but the fact that you read news and technical posts on your phones totally threw me.

Then I realized that we carry our phones everywhere we go. We read and write email on them. We send and receive text messages on them. We browse the Internet on them. We purchase goodies on them. We Tweet and Facebook on them. And, we read news and technical posts on them.

But, it made me wonder if readers really read or just skim on these devices since the tiny print can be a bit tedious to stare at long-term.

For example, my blogs, Virtually Speaking and Consumerization, tally at 15.4% Mobile phone and 9.4% Tablet for reader devices. That's an amazing 25% of my personal traffic being read on mobile devices. Also, to my surprise I have a handful of readers who use game consoles to read my posts. I'd like to hear from you game console users to find out how that works for you.

Overall, ZDNet's blog sites attract reads as 12.8% Mobile phone and 8.5% from Tablets. So, my reads on those devices are a bit higher as I would expect having a mobile orientation. I expect to see these numbers increase dramatically over the next year. With the release of new larger format Android phones, the larger screen iPhone 5 and new tablets from every manufacturer.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to see a manufacturer release a tablet specifically for the purpose of reading news and keeping up with communications of all types. Kind of a combined news, email, phone, Skype, device that's made specifically for people who are too busy to read a magazine, hit a website or ponder news on TV.

I'll dub it The Infoslab: A decision device. Where you get headlines, stock reports, messages and all of your valuable information in one place. Of course, there'll be the ZDNet feed right there waiting for your tap to bring you the tech world's latest analytical perceptions from the planet's best writers.

Talk back and tell me why you prefer to read news and articles on your mobile devices. I need to know and I'm sure our editors would like to know so that we can make the site even more mobile friendly. Also let me know if you like the Infoslab idea and if you'd use it.

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