People who spend more for their iPads seem to use them more for business purposes.

That's among the findings of a new report on trends among Apple iPad buyers from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, based on interviews with 1,000 iPad purchasers from December through April.

Getting Down to Business

The report also suggests Apple is making inroads among business users, with 23 percent of purchasers of the newest iPad, released in March, reporting work usage compared with just 13 percent of users for all three models together. The first iPad was introduced at the beginning of 2010. Eight percent of users said they were using iPads for school.

Leisure usage still predominates, though, amounting to 27 percent to 40 percent of iPad use, encompassing entertainment (including listening to music and viewing photos), surfing the Internet and playing games. Only 11 percent of those surveyed use the iPad to access social media and 8 percent use it to read books or magazines (news that should please Amazon.com, maker of the Kindle Fire, and Barnes & Noble, maker of the Nook.)

Those who pay for the higher-end iPad models, those with 36 or 64 gigabytes of storage rather than the basic 16 GB model, tend to use them more for business, CIRP said.

Twenty-nine percent of iPad buyers with 64 GB of storage use the iPad for business, but of those with 16 GB of storage only 11 percent do. In contrast, 12 percent of iPad buyers with 64 GB of storage use the iPad for entertainment, compared with 32 percent of iPad buyers with 16 GB of storage, and 41 percent of those with 32 GB.

Unsurprisingly, owners of iPads with 3G or 4G connectivity, who can go online anywhere with their wireless carrier's coverage, also tend to be slightly more business oriented, 13 percent, compared with 10 percent of iPad owners with Wi-Fi connectivity only.

Dedicated Apple customers -- those who own not only an iPad but less popular products such as an AppleTV, AirPort Wi-Fi router or Time Capsule hard drive/router tend to be more business oriented -- 23 percent, compared with 13 percent for all iPad users, the data show.

The report does not break down business uses for the iPad, such as messaging or accessing applications or a company's servers, nor measure the amount of time spent for business use.

Less Gaming?

"Perhaps one could construe the results to suggest that new iPad users say they are less likely to 'game' and more likely to conduct 'business' activities on a new iPad," said Jeff Orr, mobile devices research director at ABI Research.

Chicago-based CIRP "provides equity securities research to the investment community using advanced consumer market research strategies, methods, and analysis," according to its Web site.

"This report highlights how iPad buyers actually use their iPads," said Josh Lowitz, a CIRP partner and co-founder. "Importantly, we dug into specific uses, including video and music consumption, reading, social networking, education and business. Buyers use the iPad for many different reasons, each with implications for Apple's business model."

In a separate survey, Business Insider found that of 2,242 reader responses, 44 percent were using the third-generation iPad, while 40.1 percent have the iPad 2 and 15.8 percent own the debut model.

The most common function among those users was Web browsing (21 percent), followed by e-mail (21.4 percent), using apps (18 percent) watching video (12.3 percent) and playing games (11 percent). Those numbers varied only slightly from two previous studies by Business Insider.

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