Is The 'Phablet' A Mobile Trend That's Here To Stay?
Technology trade shows are filled with promising prototypes and demonstrations, but it can take years for them to go mainstream. Even more often, these things never come to fruition.
That's the jaundiced eye a veteran brings to almost any tech event, such as the just-concluded Mobile World Congress. Take "phablets," for example, which are devices that fall somewhere between a smartphone and a small tablet. Despite all of the ridicule and head-shaking they caused when they came out a few years ago, phablets have been on fire, proving that calls for their immediate death were undoubtedly premature. According to Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, between 2012 and 2015, sales of phablets are expected to grow from 27 to 230 million units.
The appeal may flow from phablets' ability to bring together the best of both devices, according to Geoff Blaber, vice president of research at CCS Insight.
At the top of Blaber's Mobile World Congress 2014 preview was the trend of mobile devices, such as phones, moving toward larger-screen devices. Smartphone screens are growing in size, and the benchmark is now five inches or more. Nearly every leading device-maker is already selling at least one phablet, with even more expected.
"What we're seeing with phablets is less a new, distinct category and more the emergence of a single continuum that starts at 3.5-inch and moves up to 10-inch-plus tablets," Blaber said in a recent interview.
"The fascinating part of this are the widely different distribution characteristics between smartphones, phablets, and tablets. That has big implications for everyone in the value chain."
Blaber expects 5.5-inch to 6.9-inch devices to account for 10% of global smartphone shipments by the end of 2015.
At MWC, Blaber anticipated seeing new wearable devices (such as the fitness tracking device that Samsung announced) as well as continued innovation around the Internet of Things and LTE wireless capabilities, plus a spotlight on security.
"Security will undoubtedly be a key theme," he said, particularly around making Android OS-powered devices secure for workplaces. "There's a clear opportunity for those who can address the Android security issue."
Another tablet-related trend at MWC was the move to 64-bit computing, which promises to bring legacy desktop applications to smaller, wireless mobile devices.
Mark Hackman wrote at PC World that there's a race "toward a more robust 64-bit environment, with the goal of future-proofing tablet performance. In general, that means giving them the potential to address memory beyond 4GB of RAM, and also providing consistency with other 64-bit applications that already exist on the PC."
Stepping back to read the tea leaves, it appears that tablets are evolving to be more like personal computers, and smartphones are becoming more like tablets. Maybe it won't really matter by the time 5G wireless networks come our way around 2020.
Adapted from an article by Ken Kaplan, Intel IQ Editor-At-Large.
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