If you bought a smartphone in the US this year there’s a one in five chance you bought a phablet, as the market share for plus-sized smartphones ballooned.
The latest data from research company Kantar Worldpanel ComTech shows that phablets – defined here as smartphones with screen sizes 5.5in or larger – accounted for 21% of US smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2015, up from 6% at the same time last year.
The phablet trend has been led by eastern markets such as Taiwan and Hong Kong where screen sizes larger than 5.5in account for up to 50% of active users, according to data from analytics firm Flurry.
All major smartphone manufacturers launched new phablets last year and in the first quarter of 2015, including Apple, Samsung, LG and Motorola, as well as China’s Xiaomi and Huawei.
Even Apple users love big phones
The big winner was Apple’s first phablet, the iPhone 6 Plus, which secured 44% of phablet sales in the US, despite iOS switchers from Android being down from 14.6% last year to 11.4% this year.
Outside the US, Apple gained market share in Europe’s big five – the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
“In the first quarter of 2015, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus continued to attract consumers across Europe, including users who previously owned an Android smartphone,” said Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “On average, across Europe’s big five countries during the first quarter, 32.4% of Apple’s new customers switched to iOS from Android.”
Apple claimed a 20.3% share of the big five European market in the first quarter, up 1.8 percentage points on last year. Android is still dominant despite its market share shrinking by 3.1 points to 68.4%.
While Apple and Google’s Android fight for the lion’s share of sales in the UK, BlackBerry’s market share shrank from 1.6% to 0.7% in a year, while Microsoft’s Windows Phone also dropped 1.5 percentage points to 8% of UK smartphone sales.
Microsoft hopes that its unified approach around Windows 10 is enough to boost sales, but it won’t be launched until the third quarter at the earliest. Meanwhile Google will unveil the next version of Android later this month and Apple is expected to announce iOS 9 at its developer conference in June.
