Tablets

NEW ANALYSIS: As 4G-LTE networks continue to expand across mature markets, there is evidence that device choices and usage habits are also evolving in line with the faster network speeds.

A quarter of tablet PC users will use their device to pay bills by 2017. That is one of the headline findings of a new report by Juniper Research.

Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu platform, presented a tablet interface in what it described as “the next step towards one unified family of experiences for personal computing on phones, tablets, PCs and TVs”.

Research house IDC raised its forecast for the 2012 tablet market to 122. 3 million units from 117. 1 million units, noting that “Android tablets are gaining traction in the market thanks to solid products from Google, Amazon, Samsung and others”.

Analytics company Flurry detailed the difference in usage patterns between tablet and smartphone app users, noting that tablet users spend significantly longer playing games than their tablet counterparts, and with social networking the second biggest category for both form factors

Nearly half of gamers play mobile games more than they did a year ago, according to the Mobile Gaming 2012 report from The NPD Group, with 23 percent only playing games on mobile devices.

More than two-thirds of mobile developers are planning to build apps for tablet devices in the next six months, with Android the most targeted OS.