U.S. mobile news access via browsers and apps

In some cases, gender played a role in the multitasking behavior, particularly when accessing sports scores: males were almost three times more likely to access scores while watching a TV program. Females were more likely to visit social networks either during the program or during the commercial.

However, the majority of news users still get their news via browsers, not apps, according to the Pew/Economist Group study. Sixty percent of news users get their news from a tablet browser, while 61 percent get theirs from a smartphone browser, while 23 percent get their news from a tablet app and 28 percent from a smartphone app. News users who say they get their news equally from browsers and apps range 16 percent for tablets and 11 percent for smartphone users.

The data set is a part of a collection of 500 revenue and usership trends in mobile, social, Internet, tablet, video and other digital categories, published in the 200-page Global Digital Media Trendbook 2013. GDMT, in its eight year, is to be published by World Newsmedia Network, a not-for-profit media research company, in September 2013. To subscribe to the PDF report and/or the tablet edition, go to www.wnmn.org, or contact mstone@wnmn.org.