(image courtesy My Retro Space)

Nielsen, the market research and television ratings company, has released some interesting facts about the state of media consumption in America. Since we are in the midst of Consumer Electronics Show madness, it will be interesting to see if any of their statistics play out in the releases we see this week. I listed a few of the statistics I found most interesting below; check out their list for yourself and then let us know if you found anything that surprised you!

Television:

-VCRs are down 10% since 2007 with 75.8m households admitting to still owning one. I don’t know what they’re watching with it, since I don’t think new content (outside of a handful of exercise tapes) has been released on VHS for years…

-DVD players were actually stagnant, with only a 1% uptick in ownership since 2007.

-That 10% drop in VCR ownership? It all went to Digital Video Recorders (DVRs, like from the cable company or TIVO), which had a whopping 12% jump in the same time frame!

Content:

-99% of the content we watch is through a traditional television. Nielsen did NOT break out if it was through cable versus a home theater PC, Apple TV, etc.

-We all still watch too much TV! 31.5 hours a week, on average. That’s almost a full time job!

-And all those DVR users are watching 22% more time shifted content than in 2007.

Cell Phones:

-The mobile web grew 33%, though they did not break out how much was per platform.

-More people are giving up their landlines; we went from 15% cell phone only in 2006 to 21% in 2009.

-25% of all cell phone sales were smartphones. The big kicker? Nielsen thinks that number will move to 40-50% in 2010.

Other interesting Statistics:

-Apparently 49% of Wii users are female. Really shocking? 52% of PSP users are female!

-The iPhone and RIMM hold the top smartphone titles. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!

-Apple came in 4th in computer ownership at 11.3%, behind Dell (49.8%), HP (26.4%), and Compaq (12.6%)

You can check out the full report here (will open a PDF). Let us know if anything surprised you!