Are Phablets The Way Of The Phuture?

In case you don’t have enough dumb catchwords in your life, allow me to introduce you to the “Phablet” – part phone, part tablet, and some pundits would have you think it’s the way we’re headed. The trend started with Samsung’s Galaxy Note: A whopping 5.3-inch screen that’s intended to give users the best of phone functionality as well as the space a (very small) tablet can offer. The “Phablet” is, in essence, a gigantic phone (get a look at the comparison to the iPhone 4S). It’s an interesting 180 from the age when mobile phones were sold on the merits of their extremely small size. Apparently, Zoolander was imagined in the age before touchscreens.

ABI Research says the “Phablet” phenomenon is going to explode, anticipating 208 million of them sold by 2015. From a certain simplistic perspective it does make some sense: Why get a phone AND a tablet when you could get a device that combines both? It reminds me of my favorite quote from The Simpsons: “You feed the mayonnaise to the tuna…” With only two Phablets worth mentioning on the market (the Galaxy Note and Optimus VU, with the former being the one most people have heard about), it’s hard to see where this explosion is going to come from. Though, in truth, 208M in sales is not actually that big of a number for every company in the tech world in just under three years. Are we really thinking of that as an “explosion”?

But hey… it could happen. Just like that Ultrabook explosion happened. Or how Netbooks took over the world. Or…

Source: ABI Research
Via: Engadget

Corey has been been a tech journalist with a focus on Apple since 1998 and has written for The Loop, MacHome magazine, and as games contributor for The Mac Bible, and co-hosts the iGame Radio Podcast. He works as a corporate consultant and professional musician in Ottawa, Ontario.