The Bigger is Better Trend

Now that Google has added a 6” phone to their lineup with the announcement of the Nexus 6 yesterday, the two biggest names in the smartphone industry are selling phablets. Many people think phablets are ridiculous but I think they’re only going to get more and more popular.

The first phablets started to appear in 2012 after the success of Samsung’s Galaxy Note. Phablets promise larger screens for better viewing of videos, photos, reading, etc. They also provide more screen real estate to allow for more interesting multitasking and app layouts.

This trend might seem counter-intuitive at first. After all, almost everything in technology as it progresses gets smaller. PCs went from the size of a room to pocket size. Even cell phones themselves went from a larger brick size device to something that comfortably fits in your pocket. But not anymore.

It would seem like we are trying to figure out what the correct size should be for a piece of glass that is connected to the internet and we always have with us. At first this seemed to be around 3.5” when Steve Jobs introduced the world to the first iPhone. It was the perfect size for anyone with a normal sized hand to reach all parts of the screen with just their thumb while holding it in one hand.

In his lifetime, Jobs dismissed the larger phones saying they were dumb and no one would buy them because you couldn’t fit your hand around them. I think he was right, if we are just talking about phones. The problem is, as especially Jobs should’ve seen, is people rarely use their smartphones as phones anymore. The phone application on my iPhone might be one of my least used apps. Instead, if we look at the smartphone as a personal computer that we have with us all the time, it’s easier to see why we might want a bigger screen.

As a thought experiment, imagine that you took every computer (including desktops, laptops, tablets, and even TVs) you own and had to give them away and the only thing you could keep was one smartphone. Your job and day-to-day life would not change, you just now only have a smartphone to do everything you were previously doing. How would you feel about your smartphone now? Would you want your phone to be a little bit bigger if it was the only computer you could use?

In fact, this isn’t even a thought experiment. This is the way about 1 billion people currently use a smartphone. It’s their first computer and also their only computer. And instead of buying more and more computers to just leave around the house, I think there will be more of a trend to consolidate devices. Jobs thought the iPad was going to replace the laptop and he was partially right, the iPad combined with the iPhone will.

Phablet sales in other parts of the world are enormous. They already make up about 10% of the worldwide smartphone market and have a growth of about 200%. With both Apple and Google jumping on the phablet train, it will only help to speed up this growing trend.