Fast facts about explosive tablet growth

• Consumers worldwide are expected to snap up 63.6 million tablets in 2011 compared with the 17.6 million in 2011, according to Gartner.

• 46% of users read magazines and ebooks with their tablets.

• New research finds consumers react to ads on tablets more than eReaders. New research from GfK MRI-Starch Advertising of more than 7,000 users has found that tablet owners are far more likely to engage with an ad than eBook reader owners.

• Most Americans to have smartphones, tablets by 2015. A new study from In-Stat says 65 percent of all Americans will have a smartphone and/or tablet in just four years.

• After being initially embraced by young adult males in the U.S., ereaders and tablets are increasingly making their ways into the hands of women and older users. According to data from Nielsen, tablet ownership is still dominated by men (67%), although less so than it was last year, when men owned 71% of all tablets. The biggest shift in tablet ownership demographics is in age. In Q3 2010, 62% of tablet owners were under the age of 34 and a mere tenth were older than 55. Now, only 46% of tablet owners are younger than 34 and 29% are older than 55.

• In a recent document from MPA Digital, James McQuivey, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester, says that by 2015 there will be a total of 82.1 million tablet users in the US. Sales of the tablet devices will continue to increase throughout that time as well.

• Use of desktop computers is down for 35% of iPad owners since they bought the device.

• Use of laptops is also down since they bought an iPad at 39%.

• According to a report by PC World, analysts think Apple will dominate the tablet market for years to come. In the opinion of iSuppli, tablet shipments are set to increase by a factor of 12 by 2015, when total shipments of tablets will reach 242.3 million units worldwide.