Tablet Ownership Growing Faster than Smartphone Ownership in the U.S.Tablet ownership in the U.S. is surging at a pace even greater than that of smartphone ownership.

In fact, tablets are growing at a faster rate than that of any other connected device, according to The NPD Group’s Connected Intelligence, Connected Home Report.

As of the third quarter of 2014, there were 109 million tablets in use, up 35 million from last year.

“Now that the tablet market is unmistakably past the early adopter stage we are able to gain visibility into what the user base is still doing with their devices, and in this case it’s often video focused activities,” says John Buffone, executive director of Connected Intelligence at NPD Group.

More than half, 55 percent, of tablet users report leveraging a video feature of their device. This includes video calling; taking, posting, and uploading videos; as well as watching video from a streaming service or app from a TV channel or pay TV provider.

What’s driving tablet adoption? Media and entertainment accessibility have certainly inspired more than a few tablet purchases.

“Through tablets, consumers have access to nearly every top TV and streaming video app and this is contributing to utilizing tablets as a TV,” the report summary reads. “According to the new Connected Intelligence TV & Video App Availability Report, 66 of the 70 TV and streaming video apps evaluated are available on tablets. iPads have the most (66), followed by Android tablets (60), Kindle Fire (43) and Windows tablets (32).”