While smartphones are still the most popular internet-enabled mobile device, new research shows that tablets are catching up fast. According to the Reynolds Journalism Institute, one in three U.S. adults now uses a tablet. What does this mean for digital news?

According to the latest RJI mobile research report, "The original large-format media tablets remain the most popular, but the new smartphones with larger displays and less-expensive mini tablets now entering the market may slow their growth in 2013."

But are people using these devices to get news? "Slightly more than half of smartphone news consumers said they preferred using web browsers over downloadable mobile apps for accessing news content -- but that distinction is being blurred by the increasing use of HTML5-based Web apps by news organizations."

And for tablet news consumers: "Large tablet users were somewhat more inclined to prefer downloadable mobile apps over web browsers for news (46% to 41%). Half of the large tablet news consumers downloaded one or more tablet newspaper apps, but the most popular apps were provided by television news organizations and niche news entities, such as the Weather Channel."

But despite news organizations' high hopes for tablets to spur paid digital content subscriptions, this strategy appears to be lagging. "The number of large tablet news consumers who said they had subscriptions to digital content provided by newspapers (paid separately or bundled with print) was too low to draw any meaningful conclusions."