
The Phablet Era - worldvoyageur
http://avc.com/2016/01/the-phablet-era
======
Eric_WVGG
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...)

~~~
jessriedel
> 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_WVGG
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"

~~~
sigmar
The samsung note was released in 2011. I'm not sure what the average upgrade
cycle is at the moment, but IMHO that seems like sufficient overlap that
owners of the original note would have returned to smaller phones if they
preferred them. They don't.

~~~
AJ007
Trying to switch back to a smaller screen is tough, even if you didn't want a
big phone to begin with.

Often I don't want to have a huge phone with me at all, but then I don't have
a choice. The long term may be some sort of personal communicator (watch or
otherwise.) Small screen, advanced input when necessary by voice. When people
want to read things, write messages, watch video, play games, etc, then they
can pick up their phablet -- which is effectively a phone sized tablet that
fits in your pocket.

The Apple Watch probably is the step towards this direction. However, because
it needs the iPhone it misses the full use case, for the moment.

------
anir
> 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
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...

------
bakhy
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
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...](http://www.amazon.com/Sliding-out-Wireless-Bluetooth-keyboard-
backlight/dp/B00NOM34WW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452087874&sr=8-1&keywords=iphone+keyboard+case)
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.

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

~~~
likeclockwork
BlackBerry Priv has a keyboard.

------
bramjans
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.

~~~
signal11
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.

------
colinramsay
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.

~~~
maxerickson
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_
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).

~~~
maxerickson
Yeah I guess I should have expanded that some, separate data and
messaging/phone number have to become popular more than they have to be
offered.

I took some note of the LG watch and commented about it here, at which point
someone pointed out that the Samsung Gear S has been available since 2014. I
guess the tech to jam a cell phone in a watch will be mass market ready in 1
or 2 more generations (the Gear S is _huge_ ). Then the price point just needs
to come down a bit.

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

~~~
pantalaimon
[https://xkcd.com/37/](https://xkcd.com/37/)

scnr

~~~
J_Darnley
That's still a good description of these devices.

------
miguelrochefort
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
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.

------
suvelx
> 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?

------
rayiner
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.

~~~
slantyyz
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
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.

------
gshrikant
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.

------
k__
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 :\

------
dovdov
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.

------
lmm
> 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)

------
cmrdporcupine
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.

------
f_
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...](http://www.realtimetranscription.com/showcase/DICE2010/JesseSchell/index.php)

------
StevePerkins
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
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...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zpcZCGts6iMJ:avc.com/2016/01/the-
phablet-era/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) 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.

------
TheBiv
"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)

------
Sujan
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
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.

------
Chirael
Cached version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http:/...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://avc.com/2016/01/the-
phablet-era/)

------
krampian
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.

------
JustSomeNobody
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".

~~~
pantalaimon
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.

------
ommunist
The HN effect. MySQL is down at avc.com

------
w8rbt
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.

------
moron4hire
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.

~~~
RankingMember
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.

~~~
moron4hire
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.

