( CNN ) -- Are you reading this article on your cell phone or tablet ? These days , that makes you pretty normal , especially if you 're American , according to a recent report from comScore . According to comScore , which tracks these sort of things , 55 % of the 234 million cell phone subscribers in the U.S. are getting at least some of their media diet via mobile devices . Only Japan and the UK had higher levels of mobile media usage . People in the United States increasingly purchase more than one device to help them consume all this mobile content . According to comScore , 14 % of U.S. cell phone subscribers also own a tablet -- the highest percentage in any of the countries comScore examined . In contrast , fewer than 5 % of Japanese mobile subscribers also own a tablet . `` In less than two years , nearly 40 million tablets were in use among mobile subscribers in the U.S. , outpacing smartphones -- which took seven years to achieve the same level of adoption , '' comScore noted . Driving this sharp growth was the expanded array of Android tablet options , especially Amazon 's Kindle Fire , released in late 2011 . Also , the iPad 2 release yielded another spike in tablet ownership . Does this mean people are shifting their media experience away from computers and smartphones -- or broadcast and print media -- to tablets ? Not necessarily . Here 's what comScore has to say on the matter : `` As tablets gain popularity among users , they are not replacing mobile phones or computers . Rather , it would seem that tablets are supplementing a multi-device diet that is increasingly becoming the norm among consumers . ... While smartphones may have provided consumers with a first taste of mobile Internet connectivity , tablets have furthered the rise of the 'digital omnivore ' -- consumers who now go about their days engaging seamlessly through multiple online touchpoints . '' Seamlessly ? Well , sort of . A `` seamless '' cross-device media experience implies that you can easily pick up where you left off when switching devices . This is the case when reading Kindle e-books , whether via the Kindle smartphone or tablet app , on a Kindle e-reader or Kindle Fire tablet , or on a computer . Similarly , when you stream a Netflix movie to your TV or computer , and pause it , you can resume watching it from the same point via the Netflix app for mobile devices . But not all services work this well . If I 'm watching a short film on the new Vimeo app for Android phones , pause it , put down my phone and turn on my TV , bring up my Vimeo account ( I use AppleTV for streaming media ) , and select the movie I 'd paused ... it takes me back to the start of the movie . It does n't remember where I stopped watching . Gamers often experience similar frustration when they try to continue a game in progress on a different device . How well you can sync a game -- if at all -- depends on the game and the devices involved . Sometimes that experience is seamless . Sometimes not so much . And all those long-form articles you want to read ? Features like `` Reading List '' in Apple 's Safari browser for computers and mobile devices -- or third-party services such as Instapaper -- allow you to sync a list of articles to read across devices . But they do n't let you just pick up where you left off in the midst of a 8,000-word Harper 's feature story . And they may not support offline reading . Syncing your content across multiple devices is a major technical challenge which will take time to solve . But so far , that kind of syncing is n't a big concern for most consumers . More commonly , people tend to use different devices to access content at different times of day or in different settings . For instance , comScore 's analysis of traffic to news websites found that from about 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a typical weekday , computers are the leading source of site traffic . Tablet traffic to news sites peaks in the evening . On weekends , however , tablet traffic to news sites peaks in the morning . Simultaneous use of multiple devices has already become major part of how we experience media . Last October , Nielsen found that 40 % of people who own a smartphone or tablet use those mobile devices while watching TV . What do people do on their smartphones and tablets while watching TV ? According to Nielsen , `` e-mail was the top activity for both men and women during television programming and commercial breaks . In addition , women reported engaging in social networking more than men , while men checked sports scores more often . '' The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of Amy Gahran .
More than half of cell phone owners get some of their media on mobile devices . comScore finds 47 % of all U.S. cell phone owners currently use apps . Comment: