Simon's Blog

So the Phablet is coming or already here depending on your point of view. Indeed some people wont even accept the term, which to an extent I agree with them. However, I really do suspect over the next 12/18 months we’ll be hearing a lot about Phablets and the reason for that is 4G.

Before I go on any further perhaps it might be a good idea to define what I think a Phablet is. The one device which seems to be held up as an exemplar of the term is the Galaxy Note from Samsung. Here we have a device which is bigger than the standard smart phone but smaller than the iPad standard for full blown tablet devices. It has all of the functionality of the larger device as well as the functionality of a smart phone. But the crucial point is that it is significantly smaller than the iPad. Now of course it can be argued that the iPad mini could fit in to this area but this, I believe would be wrong for two reasons. Firstly the iPad mini is a retrograde product by Apple in that it would appear to be more aimed at trying to kill the Kindle Fire HD and secondly it isn’t a phone.

It can also be rightly pointed out that the phablet is not a new concept at all and had been tried, unsuccessfully, in the past. This again is true – however this misses the important nexus between the Phablet and 4G.

Why the UK market?

Before discussing the development of 4G I think I should make it clear that I will be basing my concepts of what 4G can offer on the UK market. This might seem a bit parochial but it would seem that most American tech blogs are happy to bang on about the world through an American perspective so I’m going to do the same. Anyway when it comes mobile telephony the UK is still one of the leading areas in the world, the biggest in Europe and far more connected than the US. This being said the UK has been slow on 4G uptake but this is soon to disappear and by the end of next year there should be good 4G coverage across most of the country with all the major networks competing for your custom – something that doesn’t seem to happen in the States as much.

The phablet and the changing market

So how will this effect the phablet market? Well the first way is that there will be a demand for larger screens on smart phones. The better the access to TV/Films etc on the go then people will want to see them in higher definition and on bigger screens. Now of course this can already be done on a full blown tablet but, compared to a smart phone a tablet is large, cumbersome and doesn’t have telephony built in. In short the more you use your mobile device on the go the more you will want it to deliver the full blown tablet experience in a more compact form.

The second impact on the phablet market will be to liberate it from trying to be a tablet. This might sound somewhat daft but at the moment much of the rational for the phablet is along the lines of everything you can do on a tablet but in a smaller package. In other words the phablet is defining itself against the much bigger tablet. However, with 4G it becomes much freer to develop its own personality and to define itself as the future of mobile devices – small enough to fit in your pocket – larger enough to allow you the full broadband experience anywhere (well anywhere there is 4G coverage!)

The third impact will be on the wifi hotspot market. Here we have vendors offering WiFi as a means of attracting you to their store. We have all bought coffee at Starbucks just to use their wifi but when you have a good 4G coverage this attraction starts to wane and suddenly you can use your phablet device anywhere and not just at the local coffee shop.

Now of course it is just as likely that some or all of these things won’t come to pass or that I’ve over egged the projections but I don’t really think so. 4G is the game changer as it should allow reasonable broadband speeds anywhere there is coverage and within a year that should be most of the populated areas of the UK.

So how will this effect the tablet market? Well for a while I suspect not a great deal but overtime people will start to wonder why they are carrying this large and heavy (all things are relative) tablet around and a phone when the phablet provides both functions in one. (To an extent this is already happening when iPad owners are comparing their large machines with their partners smaller and very powerful Kindle HD Fire and wondering why do they keep up with the iPad?) If this is the case then you should expect to get an increase in blue tooth ear pieces as phablets are still just a little too big to use as normal phone. However, it may well be that some happy medium will be found.

Apple in the phablet world

As for Apple this poses a number of issues. The first is that it will have to finally resolve the contradictions between the iPad and the MacBook Air. If the phablet concept really takes off then the iPad market might start to get squeezed and there would be advantages of merging the two product lines – this is what appears to happening with with some of the Dell products and dare I say it the Microsoft Surface Pro.

The next problem that will need to be resolved is where will the iPhone end and the iPad mini begin. This would seem to be a good starting point for the Apple phablet, providing all the telephony you need in hand sized package. Of course they may well be a need to resize both products to meet somewhere in the middle. In short there are a number of issues that Apple will have to resolve to be relevant in the new market. This does not mean that Apple can’t resolve these issues and they have a reputation for producing the industry base line product against which other products are judged. It is just that the market has moved on and Apple are not the best company at responding to rapidly changing markets. In short I guess that Apple’s bonanza days are over and they will have to settle to churning out multi billion dollar profits.

Well that is how I see the world developing over the next few years. As with all predictions they will be wrong in many aspects but I believe that the arrival of 4G will change things in ways that none of us have really understand. A bit like South Korea.

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk