At a point in time, phablets were seen as a fad, but that's no longer the case as 20 million phablet devices were shipped in 2013, according to Juniper Research. Furthermore, the report claims that, by 2018, the market should expect a shipment of 120 million phablet. For now, that number is only an estimation, but with the number of OEMs manufacturing tablets on a yearly basis, it's not too far-fetched. With phablets rising to the challenge, the big question right now is, where is Apple in all of this?
The following are some predictions of the tablet market.
"Worldwide tablet shipments are expected to reach 221 million units in 2013, up 54 percent on year, IDC forecasts. Next year, shipment growth is projected to slow to 22 percent on-year to a total of 271 million units. And by 2017, annual market growth will slow to single-digit percentages," the research firm said.
The first company that managed to push start the phablet market is Samsung with its Galaxy Note line of devices. The Korean giant launched the first handset back in 2011, and managed to sell 2 million units in the first 4 months. In the next two years, Samsung released both the Galaxy Note 2 and the Galaxy Note 3. The latter, which was released back in 2013, went on to prove to the world that phablets are here to stay. According to a report from Sammy Hub, Samsung sold 5 million units of the Galaxy Note 3 in just a single week. Compare that number with the original device in 2011 to see how fast these devices are catching on.
However, bear in mind that Samsung isn't the only phablet vendor in the market. Nokia is here with the Lumia 1520 running Windows Phone 8 from Microsoft, then there's the HTC One Max. These are just a few, as the market is slowly being flooded.
Where is Apple
Apple doesn't yet have a phablet up for sale and doesn't seem to be making any move in that direction. From what we have seen, Apple is only making minor hardware upgrades to its recently released devices. The iPhone 5 launched with a 4-inch display; that's 0.5-inch bigger than the 3.5-inch display iPhone 4s.
As it stands, Apple may have no choice but to enter the phablet market or risk losing out to Microsoft and its Windows operating system, as the software giant is looking to make a comeback before it is devoured by the competition.
We believe 2014 is the perfect year for Apple to disrupt the market with a phablet device or risk being left out. According to latest rumors, the iPhone 6 may come in two variants. One with a 4.7-inch display, and the other with a 5.7-inch display with a high resolution. The devices are expected to be revealed at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
