Tablets complement TV in the living room. 

Tablets are displacing PCs and smartphones as the “couch computer” of choice: 85% of US tablet owners use their tablets while watching TV, and according to Nielsen, 30% of total tablet time is spent while watching TV. The tablet’s complementary nature to the living room TV gives a raison d’etre to “second screen” apps like Miso, GetGlue, and Viggle that engage consumers in conversation and content related to what’s on the big screen.

Americans still spend more than 33 hours a week watching television. While nine in ten households in the United States pay for a television subscription, over 5 million homes subscribe to broadband and receive only free broadcast television. A report from Nielsen says that this group tends to watch half as much television and twice as much online video as the general population. Data from comScore show that Americans are watching more online video than ever, with over a hundred million viewers a day in the United States. However, online video viewing still tends to be measured in minutes, rather than hours a day.

Nielsen found that a solid 143 million people are watching video on the Internet, but 288 million are still watching content on their regular television sets. In a year that welcomed many new TVs to the market and saw many TV manufacturers struggle, these stats show that the television remains a central device in the American home.