Okay, I just bought a tablet, and can appreciate their value as many of us do.

In fact, purchases of e-reader and tablet devices are estimated to grow 60% and 178% respectively in 2011. E-reader and tablet buyer demographics show gender division relative to tablet vs. e-reader ownership.

Since the initial days, tablets and e-reader adopters have tended to be young, high-income adult males. As the market has matured, an older consumer base have become more interested in the devices. Young adults continue to hold their ground, though, and men remain ahead of women.

Here is what  April 2011 research from GfK MRI found:

• Men were 24% points more likely than average to own a tablet, while women were 19 percentage points less likely than average to do so.
• Men over-indexed less strongly on owning an iPad specifically.
• Women had a much stronger propensity to own e-readers, especially a Kindle or Nook.

Bizrate Insights and Forrester Research reinforced those findings about tablets. They learned that most tablet owners were women, but attributed this to the high preponderance of female online buyers overall. Male online buyers were actually more likely than females to have a tablet. The survey  showed:

• 44 as the average age of male and female online buyers who owned a tablet.
• 60% of online buyers without a tablet who planned to purchase one within 12 months were women.

Middle-aged consumers’ adoption of tablets and e-readers indicate that these devices are reaching another stage of market maturity.

Rapid growth implies that there is room for both product categories in the mobile device marketplace. eMarketer expects 24 million US consumers to have an iPad or similar device by the end of 2011.

Okay, so give me a few days to get up to speed on my tablet.

What are you doing with your tablet? More important, what are your customers doing and how are your marketing efforts addressing these new devices?