The best clue to understanding how tablets will be adopted comes from looking at smart-phone usage today, Trippe said.
"The iPhone users, they do an awful lot, and they are doing much more interactive and much more content-oriented tasks [like] looking up reference information, [and] reading documentation and educational material on their devices," he said. Significantly, iPhone users differ from other smart-phone users in their rate of consumption of games, news and media, sports, articles and books. "The iPhone user outpaces the average smart-phone user in these content-centric activities by really a remarkable amount," he said, "and I think that's very promising for magazine and news publishers ... [if] we can project this somewhat out to the iPad."