Phablets Are Eating Phones And Tablets

It’s been increasingly evident for years: smartphone users are digging bigger phones as they do more on screens, and spend less time talking on the phone. And there’s no sign of the appetite for supersizing mobile handsets abating — not according to a new report from Yahoo-owned mobile analytics firm Flurry.

The firm has looked at a top-slice of data taken from the 1.6 billion devices it tracks every month — focusing on the top 875 devices which it says accounted for 87 per cent of sessions in March 2015 — to explore global active device usage by screen size. Flurry found that phablets have more than tripled their share of usage since last year.

In January 2014 Flurry recorded just 6 per cent of active users were on phablets vs 68 per cent using ‘medium phones’ (devices with a screen size between 3.5 inches and 4.9 inches). But by March this year phablet usage had swelled to a fifth (20 per cent), with medium phones squeezed down to 59 per cent.

Full-sized tablets are also being cannibalized — or capped — by phablets, with a shrinking overall share of active users:

Apple’s first phablet, the iPhone 6 Plus, went on sale last fall — finally affording iOS users who want to remain on Apple’s platform the option of using an i-Phablet. That pent up demand has evidently contributed to driving phablet usage.

That said, Android remains the dominant force in phablets — which is not surprising, given how many more large screened Android smartphones there are to choose from, vs just the one iPhone. Flurry found that around a third (36 per cent) of Android users are using phablets, vs just four per cent of iOS users. So iOS developers are still mostly going to be focused on building smaller phone experiences — and on iPad apps (full-sized tablet usage accounts for a fifth of iOS usage).

By contrast, Android usage on full size tablets is very weak (just three per cent) — underlining what we knew already: that Android tablets have flopped, but also that there has been less impetus and demand for full-sized Android slates because Android phones have had larger screens for longer.

Flurry has also charted the growth in Android device makers offering phablets — noting that Android phablets only made up 10 per cent of overall Android phones back in 2013. But, two years on, phablets account for close to a third (27 per cent) of all Android devices. So really the Android phablet is the Android tablet.

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