As reported in German media, the well-known German pollster and social research foundation the Allensbach Institute has just released the latest edition 0f its “Allensbacher Markt- und Werbeträgeranalyse” (Allensbach Media Analysis), or AWA for short, including e-books and onscreen reading for the first time in its poll this year.
You can find the original document here, and its official website here.
The results indicate that 5.2 percent of Germans over 14 years of age, some 3.66 million in a population of around 82 million, already own an e-reader device, with a further 3.5 percent, or almost 2.5 million, planning to buy one in the next two years.
Around 4.2 million, or just over six percent of the population, have bought e-books in the past 12 months.
This still puts the German e-book market behind the German audiobook market, which boasts 7.4 percent of the German population (or 5.17 million) as customers within the past 12 months. Meanwhile, over 60 percent of Germans still prefer printed paper as almost their exclusive reading medium.
There are grounds for suspicion that the AWA is underreporting e-book penetration – the German media reports note that around 12 million e-book downloads were recorded in Germany in the past year. All the same, despite the push by Amazon and others into German markets, there is clearly plenty still left to do down the Rhine.
