iPads not just for ‘fanboys’— and fangrrls

New data released by comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) suggests iPads aren’t just for die-hard Apple loyalists, the boys — and girls — who wait with bated breath each year to see what Steve Jobs has up his turtleneck.

Nope, iPad owners also use other devices and platforms. Although the comScore Mobilens report shows Apple is — not surprisingly — the most popular smartphone OEM (original equipment manufacturer) among iPad users, Research in Motion (RIM) is second with a 17.5% share, followed by Samsung with 14.3%. Google’s Android is not absent from the findings, either: The report examines the Apple iOS-Android rivalry and finds that 14.2% of iPad users have Android phones, indicating the savviest consumers know you can’t commit to just one OS forever.

Further disposing of the fanboy myth are the age profiles of iPad users: The 25-34 group makes up 27% of iPad users, followed by the 35-44 folks at 20%. So while the 25-44 segment are most likely seeking more advanced technical capabilities, they’re also more likely to have the discretionary income to buy an iPad — more so than, say, the 18-24 crowd (15.2%) and the 55-64 group (7.3%).

27% of iPad users are 25 to 34 years old.

comScore Mobilens
February 2011 study

The 18-24 set won’t be without for long, though. The growth of the e-textbook market will see to that, putting tablets –including iPads — and other mobile learning tools in the hands of younger users and marking the declining cost of adoption.

In the latest proof of the shift in the textbook industry: CourseSmart, a consortium of e-textbook providers, has partnered with Pearson eCollege (NYSE: PSO) to offer colleges and universities access to more than 20,000 textbook titles and other course materials from more than 25 publishers. (By contrast, Publishers’ Weekly reported in August that CourseSmart’s iPad app offered access to 14,000 digital textbooks from five publishers. ) The new titles will be made available through Pearson’s LearningStudio, a cloud-based software-as-a-service platform that allows colleges to offer students the option to buy digital education materials at a lower cost.

UPDATE 04-20-2011: CourseSmart announced today its app for Android, CourseSmart for Android 1.0. (Awesome name. Hope they paid that marketer well.)

From the news release, CourseSmart for Android 1.0 at a glance:

• Search for a topic within a single book or across an entire e-textbook stack and access the table of contents
• Zoom in on text and graphs
• Scroll through or jump to individual pages
• Read e-textbooks in landscape or portrait mode
• View, add and edit text notes
• Access to 90% of all core higher education textbooks in use today
• Shop for books at up to 60% off using an AOS version of CourseSmart’s website