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The rise of Phablets has apparently just begun. They first showed up with the original Galaxy Note, and have only continued to grow in popularity since then, with successors like the Note II and Note 3, and devices like the Xperia Z Ultra, and LG Optimus G Pro. With as popular as Phablets have become however(Samsung has sold 10 million Galaxy Note 3’s in two months globally), they still have yet to really hit their peak, but this could all soon change. According to Forbes, Bob O’ Donnell who is the founder of Techanalysis Research says that Phablets are expected to out sell traditional sized phones next year. Phablets are commonly joked about being much too big for their own good, yet they increasingly sell in higher numbers as the months go by. In Asia, Phablets are extremely popular and the demand only continues to grow.
Next year those numbers are also predicted to reach an astounding figure of 175 million devices, compared to the 165 million small tablets that O’Donnell predicts will be sold the same year. With things like much bigger screens than your average smartphones, its no wonder that more people are choosing to go with a phablet. They offer a similar size to smaller tablets like the Nexus 7, yet they offer all the functions of a phone in a slightly more portable package. Phablets are extremely (although not surprisingly) popular in South Korea, where Samsung holds their home base, and just so happens to be the company that is producing the most phablets to date. A whopping two thirds of all smartphone sales in the region are from phablets, but that isn’t the only place that is seeing a popularity boom for the larger phones. The “phablet” is also seeing increasingly higher sales in Eastern Europe, Brazil, China, and Taiwan.
While the U.S. is definitely falling behind when it comes to Phablet popularity, O’Donnell mentions that most activities that are done on smartphones here in the country are actually not phones calls. Predominantly, functions like email, web, games, and maps are what people are using most, with phone calls only taking up 16% of the users time. As the percentage of time people spend actually calling continues to shrink, we could see a rise in phablet sales here in the U.S. that is similar to places elsewhere. What do you guys think about phablets? Are you a Note 3 kind of person or do you rather enjoy screen sizes like that of the Nexus 5 and smaller? Let us know what you think in the comments on our G+ post.