The Phablet Era

http://avc.com/2016/01/the-phablet-era

by worldvoyageur • 11 years ago

59 83 11 years ago

lmm• 11 years ago

This trend is driving other trends like the rise of consumption activities on the phone:

I think the causation is backwards here. Growth in activities where a large screen is useful is driving the adoption of large-screen phones, surely?

(Feeling unreasonably pleased as this is one tech trend I managed to call and was ahead of the curve on)

TheBiv• 11 years ago

"We are converging on a single device format in mobile and that’s driving some important changes in usage. We are in the phablet era."

I don't believe the data Flurry presented can lead us to say that the device format is driving changes in usage.

I believe that looking at usage, per device, you're actually just segmenting the usage of the demographic that purchases that device.

For example, Fred has a graph that shows medium sized phones have a 100%+ increase in Sports usage. That may be due to the fact that most medium sized phones are being bought by middle aged men (who drive the majority of sports usage)

suvelx2• 11 years ago

It’s very much a normal distribution centered around the 5.5″-6″ mobile phone (phablet)

Is that because that's nearly all you can buy in the mid-high end these days?

Eric_WVGG3• 11 years ago

A few problems with the predictions...

1. The first iOS "phablet" only happened in 2014, and was very late to market. This explains why phablet growth in 2014-15 is explosive, but does little to predict future growth.

2. We are now entering the second year of no significant new small phones being released for either iOS or Android. Of course small phones would fare badly when nothing good is for sale!

The best-selling iPod was the Nano, by a very large margin. The best-selling MacBooks were the 11" Air. If there is any truth to a "6C" coming out this year I expect it will do extremely well. (Unfortunately the days of the perfect 3.5" phones are likely behind us...)

jgrahamc• 11 years ago

#2 is correct (at least for me). I want to replace my iPhone 5 with something newer from Apple but can't. So I'm not adding to the phablet bar but I'm also not adding to the 4" bar. Of course, as soon as there is a "6C" I'm likely to buy it.

brudgers2• 11 years ago

If Apple isn't making the product you want, why not buy a big ass Android or Windows phone and use until Apple does? Waiting on Apple's product-feature matrix roadmap is a tradeoff too. It just happens to involve certain current "unhappiness" for possible future "unhappiness", that is the pain/pleasure ratio of Android or Windows may be less than that of the unfilled want. Perhaps reducing the dependency chain is worth trying here to?

jessriedel• 11 years ago

Of course small phones would fare badly when nothing good is for sale!

It sounds like you're treating the introduction of new phone models as an exogenous event, but that's crazy. That's like saying "Of course people don't ride horse-and-buggies any more; hardly anybody make them! That doesn't mean cars are the future."

If manufacturers are introducing fewer models, it's because there is reduced demand for them.

Eric_WVGG3• 11 years ago

You need some period of overlap in order to measure reduced demand. If every horse dropped dead the day cars went on sale, that says nothing about reduced demand for horses.

Thank you for introducing me to the word "exogenous"

delinka• 11 years ago

I think your argument has missed how this particular market has worked in the last nine years. People flock to the "new hotness" every year not because they demanded its features, but simply because it's the new hotness. Only afterward do they realize that this new big phone isn't what they wanted. But the companies pushing ever larger phones don't produce a new hot small model. Then they eliminate the old models slowly. It's only when the new hot phone comes in a variety of sizes that we will know what the demand truly is.

Back when cars were supplanting the horse-drawn carriage, people had choice for years. Even today, if you prefer, you can get a horse and the carriage to drive around in. But you can't find specialty shops building that small phone you want.

Arnt2• 11 years ago

That's good justification for there being few such models, but I see no decent small phones.

http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/?cat=umtsover&asd=on&asuc... says that right now, android phones up to 55m width have at most 512MB RAM, so they'll be sluggish or worse.

bobajeff• 11 years ago

If manufacturers are introducing fewer models, it's because there is reduced demand for them.

That assumes manufacturers solely pay attention to demand before making and selling a device. Which is wrong. They pay attention to what carriers want. Which is usually what will help them sell expensive data plans. Also, companies care about what Samsung is selling. In Samsung's case they care about what components they themselves supply to other companies (SoC's, OLED's etc.). So it's in their best interest to keep them in demand.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

well until you wear your phone on your wrist why would we want to go back to small phones and end up with a two or worse three device world?

we won't know till midway through the year if this new phablet size is the one to rule them all but it does solve the problem many have which is, why do we need so many devices that nearly duplicate each other, here is the common ground.

and please don't anyone point to watches like Apples which is a useless device if you don't have the phone to do the work. I don't pay four hundred plus bucks to have a device that needs another device to work

suvelx2• 11 years ago

well until you wear your phone on your wrist why would we want to go back to small phones and end up with a two or worse three device world?

Because I can't fit a phablet in my trousers.

Or is this the trouser manufacturers fault?

hammock• 11 years ago

#2- you left out the Galaxy S6 Edge

onion2k• 11 years ago

Of course small phones would fare badly when nothing good is for sale!

There's also the fact that what people use their phone for has radically changed in the past few years. Small phones are great for talking because they're light and easy to hold, and they're great for portability when they're not being used, but the number of minutes spent talking to people is continuing to fall, while the popularity of messaging and pictures is still growing - people want a device that's good for entering text and looking at images, and that necessitates a larger screen and keyboard.

A brilliant small phone would still do badly simply because the market for them is shrinking.

bakhy4• 11 years ago

ad 2 - Sony's Compacts are pretty good. tho, no Gorilla glass (Sony has it's own, scratch-friendly thing), and they issue new models at such a stupidly quick pace, that the Z1 Compact which i have is already not getting updates any more (no Marshmallow) even though it's less than 2 years old, and almost identical to the Z3 which is getting the update. but i guess that happens with all producers...

aidenn03• 11 years ago

I'll have to check those out; I'm thinking of switching carriers soon and Sony phones don't seem to be available for Sprint (my current carrier) [edit] though at 5.2" it's still a bit on the large size.

zdw• 11 years ago

The best-selling MacBooks were the 11" Air.

I doubt this.

Apple never broke down their numbers to specific models (to my knowledge, link if you have a source).

The 13" models were much more popular in nearly all hardware surveys I'm aware of.

Eric_WVGG3• 11 years ago

Purely anecdotal. I've seen so many more 11" models over the years that I didn't even think that was a question. Link me any surveys you have.

PhrosTT• 11 years ago

Yes to #2. I desperately need a new Android and want a close-to-stock experience.

My choices are the 5.2" Nexus 5X or the 5.7" Moto X Pure. Both of which are WAYYY too big.

So yes this will skew stats towards larger screens, but it should not be construed as the will of the consumer. Just idiots in marketing trying to out stat each other.

aidenn03• 11 years ago

Me as well, I bought a used 2014 Moto X because it was the nicest phone available under 5 inches.

grabcocque• 11 years ago

Phablet is such an ugly portmanteau. Let's stick to calling them "huge-ass phones".

pantalaimon2• 11 years ago

https://xkcd.com/37/

scnr

J_Darnley• 11 years ago

That's still a good description of these devices.

colinramsay• 11 years ago

My iPhone 6S is too big for my hand, so I dislike the size of the hardware, but there's no denying that the keyboard's a bit less fiddly and the screen real estate is nice.

It's a compromise, and not one which I really like. I can't see much of an alternative though.

signal112• 11 years ago

It may have something to do with the iPhone's aspect ratio and UI. I have small hands and my 6S (not 6S Plus) is indeed too big; however I find the LG G3 (which has a bigger screen IIRC) quite usable one-handed.

Maybe that's because of Android's UI, where the back button and app switcher are easily reachable with one's thumb, towards the bottom of the screen. I still haven't mastered the art of using one-handed 3D touch to invoke the iOS app-switcher -- I have to use my other hand or double-press the home button.

maxerickson2• 11 years ago

The alternative is multiple devices that are cheap and work together seamlessly (I guess the first step is phone companies offering data only plans).

ascagnel_• 11 years ago

Every major carrier offers a data-only plan; they're typically used for tablets, although Samsung made a connected camera and LG made a connected watch (that was pulled off the market after less than a week).

JustSomeNobody2• 11 years ago

I think this is largely due to "bigger is better" mentality of marketing (and consumers). All it will take is one OEM to make a popular smaller phone and all the other OEMs will start marketing to this "new segment".

pantalaimon2• 11 years ago

But bigger really is better when it comes to displaying content. Sure at some point handilyness begins to suffer, but it seems there is a sweet spot at 5.5". I wouldn't want a bigger phone at that point, but I don't want to go back to a smaller one either.

slantyyz2• 11 years ago

> I think this is largely due to "bigger is better" mentality of marketing (and consumers).

I'm not sure this is the case. Ask anyone over 40 whose near-vision eyesight is starting to decline, and they'll tell you that there is a real-world problem with reading text on a smaller screen. I fall into that category.

All other things being equal, I'd choose the smaller device, but a bigger screen enables me to set the font larger and read content in short bursts without having to pull out my reading glasses as well.

dovdov• 11 years ago

iPhone 6(S) Plus is way under-supported by the developers. It could display a split view just like the iPad, but check out how many apps take the advantage of this, see facebook, skype, youtube, etc. None of these. Twitter rotates landscape at least, but that's not support, just a feature ticked in Xcode.

ommunist• 11 years ago

The HN effect. MySQL is down at avc.com

anir• 11 years ago

It’s very much a normal distribution centered around the 5.5″-6″ mobile phone (phablet)

o.O This term is so abused...'normal distribution'. My boss would use it all the time without even knowing the parameters.

It ain't normal distribution. This is categorical data which in this case can be fitted with a multinomial distribution.

svantana• 11 years ago

Even worse, the numbers are differences, which can take on negative numbers as well, so it doesn't even make sense to talk about a distribution (in the probability sense).

I read the AVC blog once in a while as I feel he's a pretty well-informed investor, but I often get the feeling he doesn't understand the most basic mathematical/technical concepts. I guess he has a "numbers guy" for that stuff...

bramjans• 11 years ago

I believe the increase in "phablet" users is also thanks to emerging markets getting connected.

While living in South America the amount of "big phones" really surprised me, as they seemed so impractical. When I realised after a while that many people used their phone as their only Internet device, it made a lot more sense.

signal112• 11 years ago

Users in Hong Kong (which has great internet access and where presumably the phone is not the only internet devide) appear to like large phones too. It seems counterintuitive but these phones were mostly being used two-handed, and their users had jackets/man-bags/handbags. I wonder if the reason is that users who use Chinese IMEs find the larger screen more convenient to write and view a decent amount of data at the same time.

f_• 11 years ago

I am somehow reminded of a snippet of a Jesse Schell talk back in 2010 [1] when he predicted convergence of technology in the pocket ... I, too, suspect devices are going to converge towards a device that can be held with both hands, has maximum screen real-estate and still fits in a pocket. One hand usage seems less important as the hold-to-ear phone aspect is slowly phased out as a valid use-case for these devices.

[1] http://www.realtimetranscription.com/showcase/DICE2010/Jesse...

StevePerkins• 11 years ago

Link is dead with a "Error establishing a database connection" message.

I'm not familiar with "avc.com", but I imagine that any entity with a three-letter domain name must have spent a fair amount of money establishing a web presence. So whichever CMS platform runs their site, how are they NOT using a standard cache plugin that pre-renders pages for articles?

There's no way that a professional CMS-driven website should completely go down over a broken database connection. My personal blog site only draws around 10K page views per MONTH, I only spend $5/mo hosting it, and this sort of outage wouldn't be possible.

fps• 11 years ago

avc.com is Fred Wilson's (a venture capitalist) personal blog. It gets regularly linked off of HN, so i'm surprised that it's down.

Judging by the cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zpcZCGt... It's a simple static blog entry with disqus comments. There's no good reason for it to be hitting a database on every request.

dschep• 11 years ago

Wappalyzer[0] reports that he's running WordPress.

[0]https://wappalyzer.com/download

Chirael• 11 years ago

Cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...

w8rbt• 11 years ago

In less developed countries where power is unreliable, small simple phones with long battery life dominate. The market demands a phone that can go at least three days and ideally five before requiring recharge. They can't charge power hungry phablets every day. Half or more of humanity live in these places. That should be taken into account when looking at these statistics.

krampian• 11 years ago

We suspected this was going on when we looked at the analytics for our ecommerce sites recently and noticed a big shift away from tablets towards mobile (Google breaks them out separately). Large phones would of course fall under the latter category.

gshrikant• 11 years ago

It makes me a little sad that simply making screens bigger (for whatever purpose) is considered technological progress.

Most of the high-end phones now seem to settle around the 5+ inch margin, leaving those of us who need a good smaller phone with little to no choice.

Even with good build quality and lighter weight, I would take a phone I could physically hold in one hand over something which needs software gimmicks (Samsung) for one-hand use. Just one anecdotal datapoint.

moron4hire3• 11 years ago

This is all well and good, but in 3 to 5 years, VR/AR will make the screen go away completely. The shape of your device will be purely a fashion statement over any sort of feature requirement.

And yes, I think there will come a point where people will want to be seen with a headset on. It will be a form of conspicuous wealth signalling, like smartphones to begin with, smartwatches now, or long fingernails millennia ago. After the initial growing pains of "ugh, what an asshole", it will normalize and then everyone will do it.

JustSomeNobody2• 11 years ago

...VR/AR will make the screen go away completely.

Sorry. No, it's not. And no, people are most certainly not going to want to be seen with a headset on (outside of playing games).

moron4hire3• 11 years ago

"nuh uh" "yuh huh" "nuh uh" "yuh huh"

It's not going to be Oculus Rift style boxes on faces. There are already AR systems in final product development that are more the size of ski goggles. I personally know of one system in R&D that is the size of aviator sunglasses.

The fashion industry 100% tells people what they will want to wear. If Facebook is smart, they'll be partnering with major fashion designers in a year, and you'll start seeing AR headsets incorporated into fashion shows in 2 years.

RankingMember• 11 years ago

Like how everyone wears bluetooth earpieces now, right? :P If I recall correctly, bluetooth earpieces went through a 15 minutes of fame "oh cool" public reaction followed by un-ending "ugh, what an asshole" as everyone had the experience of answering someone saying "hello" at the grocery store and then realizing they were talking on their bluetooth.

moron4hire3• 11 years ago

The problem is that Bluetooth headsets are universally shitty devices. You only wear them to be conspicuous, and by now everyone knows the emperor has no clothes.

There is a lot more money going in to HMDs than Bluetooth earpieces. I would not be surprised to see an AR headset, about the size of large pair of aviator sunglasses, on a model on a fashion runway in 2 years.

smrtinsert• 11 years ago

Maybe as a productivity accessory, but bluetooth headphones are here to stay. 20 bucks for reasonably quality sound perfect for fitness or just doing stuff around the house.

qbrass• 11 years ago

Maybe people should use a different greeting when answering the phone, like "ahoy-hoy" or something.

miguelrochefort• 11 years ago

Although I can't use my Nexus 6P (5.7") with one hand and it barely fits in my pocket, I love the screen real estate.

Actually, I've not used my laptop or iPad once since I got it a month ago. The mobile-first movement makes a lot of sense, and I can really appreciate how people in third-world countries use their phone as their only computer. The larger screen makes the whole experience significantly better, to the point I don't really miss my tablet or laptop. When I want a larger screen, which is frequently, I use the Chromecast.

zuron7• 11 years ago

In Indian colleges we're even encourage to use our phone in class for computer science. Android has got quite a few apps for programming languages.

k__• 11 years ago

Switched my 4" smartphone and 8" tablet for a 6" phablet (Ascend Mate) a few years ago and it was the best thing I did.

Long battery and I can use it for most things I did on a tablet.

But with mobile VR coming along right now, everything seems to be optimized for 5" smartphones. I would love to buy a P8 Max, but depending on the Oculus Rift pricing, my next phone will probably be a <6" thing :\

bakhy4• 11 years ago

the smartphone market is crap. it seems almost like the economy of a communist country - everything is the same.

recently my husband and me were buying new phones. i had trouble finding a decent smartphone (decent = good specs) which is <= 4,5". incredibly annoying. i simply want a strong device that fits nicely in my pants pocket, and it seems that's a weird request... my husband wanted one with a physical keyboard - now that's science fiction. completely unavailable in Europe at the time (aside from ancient phones on eBay).

so, this trend analysis seems really ridiculous. consumers have a very limited choice in the matter. the companies behave like sheep, and most writing about the market is sycophantic crap.

jerf• 11 years ago

We seem to be in the tail end of a consolidation phase right now, the one the article is about. I think it's largely brought on by the final commodification of the internals of a phone/tablet; even a $50 Amazon Fire tablet is now a decent tablet, something that wasn't true in that price range two years ago and perhaps even one (I wasn't looking then so I can't quite vouch for it). (Yes, it's probably subsidized a bit, but it still ends up setting the bar.)

Once that completes, I'd expect the market to expand a bit more as companies seek ways to stand out other than "we have the cheapest thing".

But you may never again see a "phone" with a physical keyboard. Too niche. Instead, you'll have to look for a case with integrated keyboard or something: http://www.amazon.com/Sliding-out-Wireless-Bluetooth-keyboar... I don't think it'll ever be economical again to produce a phone with a keyboard built in, but that niche can be filled with orders-of-magnitude-smaller runs of keyboard cases.

bakhy4• 11 years ago

the case with a keyboard is an interesting suggestion, thank you!

galfarragem• 11 years ago

I bought this "pocket-phone" recently (4.5" Android One). Not brilliant but good enough. Only available in Europe, I think:

http://www.bq.com/es/aquaris-a4-5

brudgers2• 11 years ago

Blackberry still produces smartphones with physical keyboards and smaller form factors. However, I don't know about European availability.

post_break• 11 years ago

Sony Z5C is about it when it comes to decent specs in a small frame. The new nexus 5 is stretching it. Welcome to the world of large phones.

chei0aiV• 11 years ago

http://neo900.org

cmrdporcupine• 11 years ago

Manufacturers are riding the large screen wave in my opinion because of two reasons:

1) Battery life is likely consumer's #1 complaint about their phones. If you have a big screen, you can pack a big battery under it. 2) "Arms-race" product differentiation ala "Mhz wars" on computers. "My screen is bigger than the last model..."

I miss my old Palm Pre phones. I don't need a big screen for checking my email and Facebook, doing some chats, some voice calls, playing some music, and reading the odd news article, which is what I use my phone for.

But as a consumer I am being forced down the large screen path, because that is all the market is offering for some time now.

Sujan• 11 years ago

There's a little problem with the article:

The most interesting stat I saw in the report is this chart about device distribution in 2015:
It’s very much a normal distribution centered around the 5.5″-6″ mobile phone (phablet). There are still some people out there using smaller mobile phones and small tablets

Actually the graph shows the growth of time spent on devices, not total distribution of time spent. I'm sure total time shows quite a different thing than "some people" using small phones.

Of course the rest of the post is still correct, though.

rplnt• 11 years ago

It would be great if these phablets could make a room for smaller phones that don't suck. We already see proper "mini", "compact" phones, so let's hope they actually get mini and compact. Right now they would be laughed off as too big in the early days of smartphones.

rayiner• 11 years ago

To counterweight defenders of small phones. My wife, her mom, and my mom switched to the 6 plus (from 5s) the minute their contract was up. They didn't even ask about smaller phones. For a big chunk of the population (people who carry purses) the upper limit on cell phone size is not bounded by pocketability. That probably has a significant impact on the market.

slantyyz2• 11 years ago

There's also the chunk of the population with vision problems like presbyopia.

I just upgraded my Moto G to a Moto X Play, and the pocketability hasn't been adversely impacted. My new, bigger, phone doesn't really feel bigger in the pocket (thanks to thinness and smallish bezels), and I can't really tell the difference.

The best thing is that I can set the font size to Huge and read the screen with only a little squinting without having to pull out my reading glasses. I don't think there's any way I could go back to a screen the size of an iPhone 4/5.

fluxquanta• 11 years ago

There's also those of us who are just bigger people. From fingertip to palm my hands are on the order of 10 inches long. The standard phones of a few years ago were incredibly difficult for me to use. I still have an iPhone 4S that I use in a speaker dock for media and I can easily (and regularly) press 4 keys at once with one touch.

That said, there's clearly a market for smaller phones still, just not from me, and I don't understand why the manufacturers don't see this.

berns• 11 years ago

I would say: For a big chunk of the population in developed countries. If you saw a person get one of those big things to take a call on a crowded bus you would realize how inappropriate they can be. (But of course nobody talks on their phones anymore.)

csixty4• 11 years ago

A lot of people around here use their earbuds to talk on the phone. It's especially handy if you're already listening to music when someone calls. I'm not sure how popular that is outside Boston, though.

cannam• 11 years ago

I don't think anyone argues that bigger phones shouldn't exist, that they don't have plenty of good uses, or even that they shouldn't be more popular than smaller ones. I can think of more advantages of a bigger phone (for users in general) than disadvantages. What's irritating is just not having the choice, and especially not having the option to get an updated version of the thing you were already happily using. I grumble about this a lot myself (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10764713).

If typical mainstream phones are designed & built with a lead time of a year or more, & if a company was planning to release a small one soon, & that company was less secretive than Apple, we'd surely know about it already. There are rumours about Apple, and if they turn out not to be true, then we maybe have to conclude that no new small single-hander smartphone (as we know the device now) will ever appear again.

The Phablet Era

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