A growing number of consumers in the U.S. and overseas are downloading premium media to their tablet devices despite the wide availability of free content, according to new data issued by Nielsen.

Click here to zoom in on this chart from the Nielsen study.

The U.S. leads in most paid content consumption categories. Sixty-two percent of American respondents have downloaded premium music to their device, compared to 20 percent of tablet owners in Italy, 19 percent in the U.K. and 9 percent in Germany. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. tablet owners have purchased e-books, far ahead of Italy (26 percent), the U.K. (10 percent) and Germany (7 percent), and another 51 percent of Americans have downloaded movies, eclipsing Italians (23 percent), Brits (9 percent) and Germans (6 percent).

Tablet owners in the U.S. also lead their international counterparts on premium magazine downloads (41 percent of consumers), television shows (another 41 percent), streaming radio (27 percent) and sports content (22 percent). The U.S. does lag on premium news downloads: Only 19 percent of American tablet owners have purchased news content, behind Italy at 44 percent, tied with the U.K. and ahead of Germany at 15 percent.

Apple's iPad dominates 73 percent of the worldwide tablet market, Forrester Research reported earlier this month. None of the iPad's Android-powered competitors can claim more than 5 percent of the tablet market, Forrester adds. Apple will release the iPad 3 on Mar. 16.