A new study found that the iPhone 6 plus captured 41 percent of the phablet market share for the three months ending with October. The achievement is remarkable in that the device was only available for sale for just over a month of the three-month period.
While the phablet market has been growing steadily over the last couple of years, Apple stayed out of the game until the release of the iPhone 6 Plus this September. Samsung was once the primary seller of phablets and its Galaxy Note series has been hugely successful, but just a year ago the phablet market in the U.S. accounted for just 2 percent of total smartphone sales.
The data released by Kantar Worldwide shows that with the introduction of the iPhone 6 Plus, the phablet trend is growing exponentially, as phablets now account for a full 10 percent of smartphone sales compared with the same period in 2013.
And although Apple's entry into the phablet game was only available for a little more than one month out of the three-month period measured in the study, it still managed to gain a whopping 41 percent of the phablet market during that time. Not surprisingly, when consumers were asked their primary reason for purchasing an iPhone 6 Plus, 60 percent answered screen size, with LTE/4G connection capabilities coming in second.
Other data revealed in the survey showed that the iPhone 6 Plus was responsible for 10 percent of iOS sales during the period. Despite also being on sale for slightly more than a month of the three-month period, the iPhone 6 was the most popular iOS device, capturing 33 percent of iOS market share, followed by the iPhone 5s with 26 percent and the iPhone 5c with 18 percent.
It can also be extrapolated from the data that the iPhone 6 outsold the iPhone 6 Plus by a little more than a 3-to-1 margin. However, it will be interesting to see data for the following quarter, because the availability of the iPhone 6 Plus was severely constrained during the period measured and therefore might have skewed the data as some consumers who would have chosen an iPhone 6 Plus settled for the iPhone 6 simply based on availability.
