“Having created the tablet market with the iPad, Apple has been woefully slow into Phablets,” Haydn Shaughnessy reports for Forbes.
“Unless Apple acts quickly the Phablet market will shape up into a two horse race, without iOS,” Shaughnessy reports. “According to a new report from Juniper Research in the UK, the Phablet market is set for very rapid expansion with Nokia alongside Samsung in the lead. In other words, the large screen format would bring about a surprise revival for Windows in a fast growing market.”
“The reality is the fast developing markets like China, which Apple is trying to woo, make far more use of large screen applications like streaming services and games,” Shaughnessy reports. “Research from GlobalWebIndex, shared with me last week, suggests also that there is a strong trend towards device sharing in these markets. In other words the household acquires on[e] of each -tablet, laptop, Phablet.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last week:
If the high-end wants larger phones (and if our polling is any indication, the high-end most certainly does), then Apple should already have larger screen iPhones available. This is Tim Cook’s mistake. He’s left money on the table. Fortunately, contracts run out every day. There’s still time to for Apple to offer proper choice to the mid- to high-end customers that Apple actually wants. One size does not fit all.
And, many Chinese customers do not “prefer” to have one device, one device is generally all they can afford. This is the case in many markets around the world. Apple needs to provide choices to quality customers everywhere. The 4-inch iPhone simply isn’t cutting it for far too many people.
If Apple needs iPhones with larger screens – and they do, because in some places, quality customers are still somewhat economically challenged and therefore try to do it all with a phone versus owning an iPhone and an iPad and, in every market, healthy percentages of quality customers simply prefer more screen real estate – then Apple should release iPhones with larger screens ASAP.
Apple is late on this, but there is still time to recover. Release the Kraken, Apple!
Related article:
Analyst: Apple to launch 4.7-inch iPhone 6 in June; larger 5.7-inch iPhone model due this autumn – January 20, 2014