eWEEK Readers Want Tablets For Christmas

The gadget most hankered-after by eWEEK readers this Christmas is a tablet, according to our latest poll, confirming research by comScore that Apple’s iPad is helping to drive consumer spending on computer hardware.

In a poll of 156 readers, 26 percent of you said a tablet would be your first choice of Christmas gift, with 14 percent opting for a smartphone. For more than a fifth of you, however, your greatest wish over the festive season was to have a few days off with no technology – we’re with you on that.

A handful of you voted for MP3 players, netbooks and cameras, and surprisingly few (3 percent) opted for an e-reader, given the high-profile UK launch of Amazon’s Kindle in July this year. It seems that most of our readers are more excited by multimedia tablets than a single-function reading devices.

Over a quarter of you were keen to contribute your own suggestions, and we are extremely grateful to those who said that all they wanted for Christmas was their two front teeth – we were asking for it really. Many thanks also to those who wanted “world peace” and “to get laid”. Best of luck with those Christmas wishes.

Gadget lust

More serious suggestions included a pocket camcorder, a MacBook Air, Bose headphones and even a Parrot AR Drone. (Anyone else interested in winning an AR Drone, make sure you become a fan of eWEEK Europe’s Facebook page for a chance to win).

While the poll shows that a fair few adults are hoping for a shiny new gadget this Christmas, new research released yesterday reveals Britain is raising a new generation of technology addicts. According to uSwitch.com, 87 percent of children will receive a gadget this Christmas from their parents, who will fork out an average of £108 on each child.

“There’s no doubt that British kids are switched on to technology, and that the next generation are growing up as digital natives,” said Ernest Doku, mobiles expert at uSwitch.com. “The sheer amount of time that children spend playing with technology, whether listening to music or playing computer games, has never been higher and is growing all of the time.”

Your predicitons for 2011

In our next poll, we’re asking you to offer your predictions for the year to come. What does 2011 hold for the technology industry, and how will the current trends play out?

Will Wikileaks take its whistleblowing status to new heights and publish the user names and passwords of all members of the Anonymous group? Will the tablet format be made obsolete by something racdical, and almost overlooked….the desktop PC? Will smartphone sales exceed the world’s population (that pretty much sums up what market researchers are telling us)? Or will Google Street View go real-time and sell adverts on your house?

Personally we think the enterprise social networking drive will force us to publish eWEEK exclusively on Facebook.

OK, our suggestions are a bit silly, so we’re expecting plenty of your own weird and wonderful predictions for the year ahead.  Vote using this link until the poll appears in the left hand column of the site and join the debate.