Skyrocketing Apple iPad®, Amazon Kindle® Fire™, and Barnes & Noble NOOK® Color e-table and e-reader sales raise the question: Who is buying these things – and why?

In the world of B2B communications, some dealers, distributors and sales people are using e-tablets as a communications tool, often for sales presentations. But in a technology toolbox crowded with smartphones and laptops, it’s hard to figure out the real value of e-tablets and digital readers. Are they just another digital gimmick, media-consumption toys? Or the most disruptive force since Gutenberg’s printing press?

In this discussion, multifunction e-tablets, like the iPad, and limited function e-readers, like the Amazon Kindle Fire, are collectively described as e-readers, e-books or digital readers.

That’s a little unfair. A previous post used a casual Marshall-McLuhan-style inventory of effects of various e-book devices to reveal that different digital reader platforms select different users with different traits. For example, the smartphone environment rewards the nimbleness and keen eyesight of younger users, while the static, large-type page presentation of the Amazon Kindle feels comfortable to older readers.

Nevertheless, as a new publishing platform, digital readers are collectively disrupting and stratifying how information is being consumed – and by whom.

A recent study by the market research firm BlueKai gives more insight on the typical e-reader buyer.

The human e-reader tends to be gadget-hungry creature. For example, many already own an Apple iPod. And they are likely to be older and wealthier. The most likely group of people to buy an e-reader are in the 60 to 89-year age range. Likely e-reader buyers have high household incomes ($150,000–$199,999), are international travelers and are interested in investments. Missing from this study is the gender of potential e-reader buyers.

Another study by Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project shows e-reader use is growing faster among women than men. E-book ownership is higher among those with more education and higher incomes. While 19 percent of households earning $30,000-$50,000 have e-book readers – which is amazing in itself – 31 percent of households earning $75,000 or more own e-book readers.

This data suggest e-reader buyers fall into that upscale, affluent or decision-making demographic so coveted by B2B advertisers. Wouldn’t it be great to run a tasteful message on the title page of the e-book your CEO customer is reading on a long flight to Hong Kong?

Or maybe it wouldn’t.

In the perception of older digital-reader users, evidence suggests that the e-reader device is a high-tech environment where people go to escape the effects of high technology.

Marshall McLuhan once said, “Mass transportation is doomed to failure in North America because a person's car is the only place where he can be alone and think.”

By buying an e-reader with limited features -- like the Kindle or Nook -- the purchaser is using it just like a car. Its crippled features give the user more room to think. An e-reader’s limited capability is its most liberating quality.

(For more insight on the value of technology limitation and unplugging, see Gwen Bell’s Digital Warriorship and Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero.)

To the extent digital readers are being chosen specifically to limit information flow, this mentality creates a challenging environment for B2B communicators. The e-reader trend is showing that human readers -- the most upscale readers -- want to avoid the always-on spigot of Internet information overload.

And it shows they are shunning sales messages; they’re taking the slow lane on the information highway to enjoy meaningful content in relative peace and quiet.