The digital consumption habits of Canadians according to Comscore based on their hardware show that 50% of users are on the desktop, 30% smartphones and 20% tablets. Canadians are well connected with 30.6M cellphone subscribers (73% have smartphones) in a market with a population of 35.1M (87% index), that is 2 phones per household in Canada (15.4M HHs), the average household size is 2.4. 

Tablet adoption in Canada sits at 50% of the population or 1 in each household. The digital consumption usage patterns see desktop use is predominantly during the day and tablet usage at night in the home with smartphones as the primary device. 86% of smartphone users use an app to access the web with  20% of their time is spent on on social with games/entertainment at 21%. Tablet use skews video as 75% of users watch video on the device with 33% for audio. Demand for hardware show global sales of tablets are now 40% of total shipments of computer hardware in 2016, desktops were 25% and laptops 35%. Source: Comscore/CWTA/StatsCanada/Statistica/Media Monitor

It is under this backdrop of an optimistic outlook for the growing use of tablets Quebecor has launched a tablet version of their mobile interface “J5” for their french language brands Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec daily newspapers. The mobile app version since it was released in 2014 has over 600,000 downloads between the two pubs.

SMARTPHONE AND TABLET VERSIONS

“We are pleased to provide our readers with this added opportunity to access our content on the platform of their choice, including print and digital editions, our web sites, and the J5 app available on mobile devices, Apple Watch, and tablets,” states Lyne Robitaille, President and Publisher, Le Journal de Montréal and Senior Vice-President, Newspapers, Books, and Magazines, Quebecor Media.

The latest wave of apps being released in the market are getting more personal in their new features. This new version of the the J5 app offers 5 sections to personalize the content streams and the ability to bookmarks articles for future use. The reader can have their devices interconnected or synced and move from smartphone to tablet and back in the same spot you were in. TheScore.com introduced a new app this year where you can select your favourite sports teams and get notifications about them on your phone in real time.

Digital consumption patterns today are maturing as they have settled at a 50/50 split between desk-top and mobile the past few years and it looks like tablet adoption/use is growing in mobile. So this looks like a safe bet for Quebecor to get a tablet version in the market to expand their digital footprint.