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One in two Brits now reading digital magazines says survey

By Press Gazette

More than half of Britons have bought digital magazines in the last year as the move away from print has intensified.

The results of a survey of 2,000 consumers by One Poll, commissioned by newsstand app Lekiosk, found that the migration to digital has ballooned in the last 12 months. While a year ago, only one in three respondents had bought or read digital magazines,  this year’s poll shows that one in two have gone digital.

The growth in the use of tablet computers is even more stark, with 19 per cent of respondents using them to read magazines, up from just 5 per cent in 2012.

Nathaniel Philippe, one of the founders of lekiosk, said: “When it comes to reading magazines, the future is digital – and the hardware that’s taking us into that future is the tablet. Crucially, the magazine publishers that reap the biggest rewards from the digital magazine reading revolution will be those that innovate on the traditional magazine subscription model – and on the existing digital magazine format.

“It’s clear from our research that a high proportion of British consumers want reading a digital magazine to feel like reading a print magazine, albeit with certain added, interactive features – like adverts they can click on and videos they can watch. Publishers need to start working on these new formats now: the UK’s love affair with the magazine is as alive as ever – but digital magazines have never been as much a part of that as they are now.”

The research found that 40 per cent of people wanted digital magazines to be “exact replicas” of their print cousins. When asked how digital products could be improved, 20  per cent said they would like more video content while 15 per cent wanted to be able to share articles with friends.

Pollsters further discovered that 10 per cent of Britons read magazines produced outside the UK.

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Philippe added: “Digital magazines are easily exported across borders and continents and we’ve seen quite a few users from countries where we don’t source magazines download our apps to get access to the magazines from the countries where we are working  with publishers. We’re seeing the start of a trend which could see the digitisation of magazine content drive the globalisation of a wide range of magazines.”

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