(Image Source: Los Angeles Times)

BY JIM FLINK & NATHAN BYRNE

Sounds like Santa put in some overtime, as holiday sales pushed tablet and e-reader ownership to nearly 30 percent in the United States. The New York Times reports...

“There was no must-have toy of Christmas 2011 — for youngsters, anyway. For adults, tablet computers and e-readers were the gifts of choice, judging by a new report that indicates the number of adults in the United States who own tablets and e-readers nearly doubled from mid-December to early January.”

Tablets and e-readers have been around for a while. CNN asks, “Why now?”

“It's a surprisingly big number -- nearly doubling in a matter of weeks the popularity of gadgets that have existed for at least a couple of years. The Kindle came out in 2007, the Nook in 2009, and the iPad in January 2010.”

But the rush to buy may have less to do with novelty, and more to do with price. The Christian Science Monitor notes, low-entry tablets fueled the fire under Santa’s chimney.

“Analysts attributed the growth in part to price drops on the entry-level Kindle and Nook e-readers, and the price-tag of the Amazon Kindle Fire, which retails for $200, three hundred bucks cheaper than the cheapest iPad. As we noted back in November, it costs Amazon $201.70 to build each Fire, meaning the company is actually losing money on each device it sells.”

Begging the question -- can tablet makers keep sales going? Boy Genius Blogger Jonathan Geller tells the New York Daily News -- yes.

“These numbers are absolutely going to grow over time … I do see Apple keeping its lion’s share of the market of about 70%...”.

And the Pew study which revealed the numbers notes, that’s because the people adopting and adapting seem to have the means to do so.

“The surge in ownership of tablet computers was especially notable among those with higher levels of education and those living in households earning more than $75,000. More than a third of those living in households earning more than $75,000 (36%) now own a tablet computer. And almost a third of those with college educations or higher (31%) own the devices.”