YouGov’s Technology and Telecoms stats show that one in every 40 adults in the UK either received an e-reader as a Christmas present, or bought for them as a gift or as a present for themselves.
As with paper book purchasing in the UK, there is a slight bias towards females, with 61 per cent of Kindles received by women. 55 year olds were twice as likely as 18-24 year olds to receive one.
Marek Vaygelt, head of technology and telecoms consulting at YouGov said: “This is finally the year when the late-medieval technology of the printing press was challenged by a 21st Century, digital alternative.
"Amazon has done a remarkable job of selling the benefits of e-readers and the upside for the publishing industry is that it appears e-reader owners, at least in the early days, buy more e-books than the printed books they purchased before acquiring an e-reader.”
YouGov’s modelling also suggests that over 640,000 tablets were gifted to adults, 72 per cent of them Apple iPads with 60 per cent of the Apple products being gifted to women.