Analyst punditry is exhaustive about why tablet shipments declined during calendar first quarter 2014. Apple missed Wall Street consensus by about 3 million iPads. Tech-Thoughts analyst Sameer Singh expected tablet shipments to exceed PCs during the first quarter, and that didn’t happen. But major reason why is significant.
He writes today: “As of now, we can assume that ~20 percent of all smartphones shipped have screen sizes large enough to become acceptable substitutes for tablet computing tasks”.
The implications are enormous for Apple. If phablets are the real reason for the recent decline in tablet shipments, CEO Tim Cook’s ass hangs in the wind with tiny iPhone, mid-size iPad, and nothing cellular between them.
You’ve got to watch emerging markets, where the recent trend is users going from cellular phone (dumb or smart) to tablet rather than PC as their next computing device. Phablet is best-of-both option.
I’ve seriously looked at Google Play’s fantastic deal on Sony Ultra Z. That thing is enormous, but for $449 all the phone and tab you could ever need.
As more of us talk less, viable phone size options increase. For, say, a woman who always carries a purse or student who rarely travels without a backpack, phablet is a reasonable alternative—for small business owners on the go, potentially even more so.
Apple offers nothing that competes in the category. Uh-oh.