The Phablet Era
Flurry, a former USV portfolio company now owned by Yahoo!, put out a mobile report yesterday and there’s some interesting data in there. Flurry has its analytics on over 2bn devices around the world so they see a lot of activity.
The most interesting stat I saw in the report is this chart about device distribution in 2015:
It’s very much a normal distribution centered around the 5.5″-6″ mobile phone (phablet). There are still some people out there using smaller mobile phones and small tablets, but much of the world is converging around a single large phone. That makes sense. Four of the five members of my direct family have made that move and it’s a matter of time for the lone holdout, my oldest daughter.
Here’s a forecast by Flurry of how that trend will continue:
This trend is driving other trends like the rise of consumption activities on the phone:
There’s not a lot new in this data to be honest, but it confirms a lot of what everyone believes is happening. We are converging on a single device format in mobile and that’s driving some important changes in usage. We are in the phablet era.
Comments (Archived):
curious that mr jobs was wrong about phone size early on who wasn’t wrong were millions of kids in asia, ahead of the curve, as usual
Times change. He was right enough at the time or we wouldn’t still be hearing about him.
People think of Jobs a lot when it comes to this. Was Jobs talking about trends or what is ultimately useful? My personal opinion is that Phablets are trendy but do not provide more utility. Sooner or later people are going to want to put their phone back in their pocket, or wrist, or whatever. The greedy are leading the temporarily blind.
Have you ever used a phablet as a primary device ? I couldn’t get back to something small. Might depend on usage, my phone is mainly a pocket computer, not a phone.
A Phablet is a pocket computer? I guess it depends on the size of your pockets (says the hipster with the tight pants).
any smartphone is a pocket computer.
I think he was both right and wrong. I personally like the form factor of the iPhone 5 and I like talking on it, but I hate reading/watching/writing on it, for which I like the iPhone 6+. That’s why I own both phones with two lines and two data plans!So it depends on the use case (weather Steve Jobs was right or wrong). When the first iPhone came out, I don’t think no one expected that there would be such a shift to the mobile internet.
This intersects well with an almost universal move to Gdocs which size poorly and require a larger display to be useful.
Google has done a terrible job with most of its utilities in mobile sizes. Docs, pages, spreadsheets — they’re all terrible user experiences.Opportunity abounds for new players… especially design-first minded ones…
I don’t have any issue with them specifically. Mobile Office isn’t better, UI wise.
Most people don’t take issue with things for which a better solution has never been presented.Unless the issue is near and dear to them, as experience design is near and dear to me.
That’s why we’re designers Brandon.
Agree.All of my accounts and investment are now 100% on gdocs and it’s not an issue for me but it is for the workflow of their teams.I think its driving a lot towards Slack honestly which works damn well on phone.
Phabulous.http://ipug.tv/wp-content/u…
So you’re a phablet phan? Phantastic!
reminds me of the ghetto blaster era
I’ve always had the biggest possible phone (4.3″ HTC HD2, 5.3″ Samsung Galaxy Note, 6.1″ Huawei Ascend Mate, now 7″ Huawei Mediapad X1). The Fashion Police have always been mocking, which with hindsight (yes, they mocked 4.3″ and 5.3″ too) makes them blubbering sheepish shortsighted backwards idiots.Maybe some people still use their smartphone mainly as a phone, fine. I myself mainly use mine as a computer; a 6.1″ screen is to a 4″ what a 23″ monitor is to a 15″. Would you go back to 15″ on your desktop ? 7″ is a bit much, but I’d hate going back below 6″.Edit mixed up decimals, it’s 5.3″ and 6.1″
I hear ya. There’s a lot to be said for those extra inches.
and pounds (or kilos).
I showed my 70-ish father in law a random NFL highlight (off of ESPN.com) on my new iPhone 6S+.That’s a better picture than our first 6 colour TV’s was his response.
I love my new 6s, it’s phab, except…it make my ass look phat in those jeans (which I am constant fear it will fall from).
I put my phablet in the front pocket: can’t fall out, and I can’t sit on it. Not sure it makes anything look bigger, alas…
PS @@JimHirshfield:disqus I just found your old mobile contract for kids. I so need it for my kid.
😉
Posted from my Phabulous iPhone 6S+
batteryphabulous
hehe, sadly this not longer just a joke…. + Celular. http://www.apple.com/shop/b…
This has never been a joke, 7″ and 10″ Samsung Galaxy tablets in their 3G/4G variants have always supported phone calls, all the way back to… 2010 (?). Why not ? It’s just an app, the circuitry is already there for the data. People are free not to use that app… It makes sense for some people (handicapped or bad eyesight, very sedentary…)It can be complemented by BT handsets such as this one (HTC Mini+)
I was reacting to Jim’s photo above as building off of his comment which shows an iPad.As someone who designed all international websites for Samsung and has had access to all their galaxy devices before they go to the market, I can tell you I am well aware of these things.
“Cellular” stands for data connection using 3G, 4G, not voice calls.
cell phones were around before 3G
At $34/month for life, I’m sure this is what Apple refers to them as.
Its 0F here today and the sun has not climbed 10 degrees over the horizon since before US Thanksgiving. It snowed Dec 19th for the White Christmas effect, but has stayed cold & snowed more since. Real winter this year, El Ninjo my a$$.Thanks for this Jim……
So in iOS land we are talking 6S Plus correct?On the train – I still see a lot of people with both iPhone 6 and iPad
i’m still using a smaller phone, with a 4.3″ screen. the only issue is the relatively small size of the keyboard’s keys.when i see a cheap Cyanogen 5.5″ i might give this phablet thing a go. until then i’m sticking with my phocket.
I looked over the report, seems like you excerpted pretty much all of it.One piece of data I would love to have seen is WiFi vs data network usage over time. Just like media consumption is going up on phablets, I bet at home use (for which WiFi is a proxy) is rocketing up too.The large phone is becoming the ‘go to’ device, ahead of all others. (I know, I know, ‘captain obvious’, right?)
when i try to access usv.com through Chrome i always get this error message;”A secure connection cannot be established because this site uses an unsupported protocol.”out of curiosity what’s your % split between phone and laptop?
That’s most likely a cloudflare bug….
That flurry thing is pure statistical extrapolation, it has no validity whatsoever. I remember reading a report (from Ericsson I think) with an actual survey that said consumers wanted phablets up to 7″. My googlefu is failing me right now though.
Why is 5.5 the entry point to a phablet range? That’s still small and a smartphone range in my opinion. Maybe 6+ would make more sense. The numbers would be very different then, although the trend for increased single device usage is there. What I would like to know is the answer to this question:What % of your digital time do you spend on the following device sizes:1. 6 inches or under2. Over 6 in device 3. Notebooks/PC at a desk4. Notebooks while mobile(For me: 1: 55%, 2: 5%, 3: 30%, 4:10%)
Seconded. 5.5″ is mainstream now, with the ever diminishing bezels and thickness they’re not even much bigger then the 4.7″ of yore.Plus as a phablet addict, I do notice a rather clear cutoff: at 6″ reading becomes comfortable (that’s the Kindle’s screen size), at 7″, videos become pleasant. I’ve stopped carrying around my 10″ tablet since I got my 7″ phone. Actually, even when the tablet is in the bag, I usually don’t bother taking it out. I’m graduating to a 12″ tablet to see if that changes things, plus it’s a dual-booting Android+Windows marvel, so I should be able to ditch the laptop and the netbook for longer trips too.
Interesting.We live in very different worlds.Usual day is I head out for 5-6 hours on foot multiple locations by train, walking and bike.Multiple office spaces. Without a laptop it takes hours when i get home to close on more important things to write or model.I’m moving to an 11 inch air this month to make it easier. Reading and screen size is a non issue, keyboard for writing is.
I don’t take my macbook out anymore when I’m doing meetings and running around town. I can do all I want on the Android. The notebook is getting less un-chained.
I need a laptop to write on.I always schedule breathers. Today i’m flat out from 9.30 to a 4 oclock brunch/linner meeting that will end the day.I have two blocks of writing time scheduled. They require a keyboard.
I’m now writing on GoogleDocs on Android. I love it. I’ve written long essays there. there are quirks but you get used to them :)final edits on large screen with keyboard if it’s a long one with formatting. but i can’t do powerpoints on the smartphone, and that would be a nice addition.
Each to their own.I write much shorter posts and can’t do it. YetI”m not there. I’ll buy an 11 inch air as my next step.Our realities are just a bit different as they should be.
I have a gamut of physical keyboards and mice to use with my phones and tablets, from a foldable thingie that’s barely bigger than my phone to a laptop-size multi-homed keyboard with a gutter to put a 10″ tablet in, via a Logitech DiNovo and an MS something-something-mobile that’s about Apple Keyboard sized. And a USB hub that lets me charge + use a regular keyboard and mouse at the same time.The keyboard is really a different issue from which device you use it with, I think.
You are more evolved then me.First I free myself of local storage (almost there), then the rest will follow.I write all the time so my comfort will always be the guiding principal.
Not sure who’s more evolved, but we sure are making opposite choices: I’m trying to get *more* things stored locally, especially the docs I’m working on because I’m so often out of coverage. Still looking for a way to automatically cache whole folders (not just file-by-file, but my whole “currently working on” directory & subs) locally off the cloud or off my home server’s copy.
> Still looking for a way to automatically cache whole foldersI’m assuming by “cache” you mean backup?What’s the issue with that? There are many backup tools, or if they don’t fit, you could write a small custom script or get some one to write it. And it can work for a dir and its subdirs too, just some more work to do that.
Also, make sure that you can restore from your backups by testing them, at least for important files. Even pros sometimes forget this, and have disasters. And have multiple redundant copies of backups, not just one, at least for important files, again.
2015 was a dark dark year for my backups: I had one of my NAS disk fail during a backup, corrupting the backup too in the process. I’m transtionning to RAID5+ backup for everythigng, + other backup and cloud backup for vital files. That’s a lot of drives ^^
I want my active work files, the ones I’m currently working on on my computer, to transparently synch to/from my phone’s local storage, so that when I jump in a train I can keep working on them on my phone/tablet, even with no data/widi connection.I don’t mind having to save those “active” files to a specific directory on the PC, I do mind having to “pin” them one by one on my phones and tablets, because it’s cumbersome and prone to error (i tend to pile up ancillary files in that active work folder)To me that’s “cache” behaviour because changes synch transparently in real-time (or quasi real time). I can see how you might call that backup too.Edits: clarity.
Got it now, sorry, misunderstood you earlier. Have you tried Dropbox or similar tool for this? It has apps for desktop and mobile, with synch between them. May not be 100% real time, but close, if you “save those “active” files to a specific directory”, as you said you don’t mind doing.
dropbox and gdrive won’t let me pin whole folders, just individual files. bittorrent synch seems to do it, but they keep changing it and their pricing. I think I should investigate that, or owncloud.
Fascinating. Is this because you really prefer smaller-form devices, or because you are experimenting with small mobile devices as means to participate in a sort of movement?I find small devices horribly inefficient for content creation, unless one is trying to leverage spates of time while traveling. I tortured through this reply on my iPhone 6s while here in Thailand, but would have spent about 2% the time had I been at my desk (Mac Pro, dual monitors), or 10% of the amount of time on my MBP.I had a birthday and watched a Thai language movie while trying to post this reply. 😉 Get me back to full-sized keyboards and my dual 27s… Please!Hehe
I just like the convenience if picking-up docs from smartphone or Mac without worrying about it. I write 6-7 things simultaneously. I don’t like the small screen size. Will likely go to 6inches on my next switch.
I see. You’re obviously better at creating on small devices than I. I do a little, but mostly urgent things that can’t wait. Otherwise I find my way to a larger keyboard and displays. I see others doing more on mobile now though, especially here in Asia. More useful (or fun) mobile apps are part of the reason.
Google Doc’s voice typing works surprisingly well too
Agree. And to me even a laptop is confining. I need three big 27″ monitors to work most efficiently. I think some of this has to do with how well people type and how much they typically write in reply to things.Anyway you might want to check out the Apple Macbook 12″ before buying the 11″. Or rather than the 11″ you might consider the 13″ Air.I own 11″ Air, 13″ Air, 15″ Macbook Pro (and obv. a bunch of other laptops). When I travel I take both the 11″ and the 13″. I was actually considering getting a 12″ because it packs more pixels which is good. Only thing I didn’t like was the USB C connector.The weight difference between 11″ and 13″ is made up by the extra utility. Ditto for the 12″. Honestly the 11″ is merely a backup machine for me in case the 13″ flakes for some reason.
Good thoughts.I’ll be traveling a lot this year so its decision time!
Three 27″ screens on the desk is a man’s desk. It means that you either do real hard work all day or you are a video game enthusiast and procastinator.I work on a 27″ and really don’t understand why people work on laptops while sitting at a desk. All the rest I do on an iPad, even AVC.
I’ve literally never played a video game in my life. I work all of the time and enjoy doing so. It’s fun not sure I would consider it hard though. Worse part is having to do things that are boring that are necessary. (To me that is “hard”).To me writing a program or script (spend some time doing this typically on most weeks) is not only more fun and challenging (Note I am not a programmer) but allows me to achieve a business benefit as well..) I know that many people have done quite well that have played video games (the mindcraft guy comes to mind) however somehow I don’t think that that is anywhere near typical. Games are addicting to many but so is writing your own program to solve a problem. I’ve had nothing but good results and benefits from writing things even at the level that I am at. [1] I can’t imagine a similar benefit from playing games.My stepkids are addicted to playing games (one real hard). They picked this up from their Dad unfortunately. [2] They do great in school but the unfortunate part is they could have just as much fun and much more benefit from actually spending time hacking things.[1] For example I am currently writing a routine that allows me to print out 3×5 cards on a dedicated printer that I just bought for that purpose. Dabbling a bit in actually writing postcript as well so they are printed nicely with the correct emphasis and graphic presentation. All from the command line which to me is much quicker than a gui or using a text editing program and allows me to automate many parts as well.[1] And it has had detrimental effects on him.
If you program you are a programmer, you talk to machines. Maybe as a karaoker thinks he sings but anyway, you just do it. :-)Video games are fun, specially those that have multiplayer mode. I have been hooked to one for a decade or more and always enjoy playing and being part of the community. When you are tired or just bored there is nothing better than play a bit to relax. Have you tried to play multiplayer games with your kids?
I’d rather have fun in a productive way it’s really that simple. Games like that (real life games I like btw.) have no attraction for me. As in “so I won, so what?”. Everybody is different just not something that gets me excited. To me it’s almost a negative in my mind.If I am tired or bored I’d rather read. But if I am bored it’s probably because I am doing work that I don’t like to do and so it’s not like I can not do that work so I will try and figure out a way to make it un-boring.To me it’s a game and quite enjoyable to figure out a way to get something that I am not supposed to get or that is being withheld from me for some reason. That to me is a fun game with an endpoint that is valuable.
I understand your view, if you do not get something valuable from playing there is no point in doing it. I guess that I have fun playing and I value having fun.I have to prepare the technical part of a bid for tomorrow and I am trying to make it un-boring. But it is boring.
I find 27″ too big for me, I’d rather have 2×24″ plus an Android tablet with widgets that serves as a dashboard for incoming messages (email/IM) and RSS/news.
What I actually like is the resolution, you get a lot more screen real estate that is very useful when testing things or debugging, like the crispier fonts too. Have to be experienced to be understood. 2×24″ at 2K or better resolution sounds awesome.I have tried using the iPad as a dashboard,which is a very cool idea, but it ends up conflicting with the mouse pads, as I have 2 lying around.
iOS can’t work has a dashboard because it lacks home page widgets. Android displays the actual items (unread mails…) right on the home screen, iOS only display a little toast on the apps’ icon. Multiply that by a handful of apps, iOS is no better than checking my PC’s notifications, Android is way better. Doesn’t solve the desk space issue though ^^.And… I’m getting to the age where resolution doesn’t matter nearly as much as size ^^
random widgets pic (mine has more messaging apps and a denser “text” display for news):
oh, just got it… I bought a $5 tablet stand so my tablet is actually vertical-ish, right below the monitors which are rised to eye level as ergonomic say they should be. No fighting for space with the mousepads.
Totally agree with the 13 inch. The 11 inch too small, 15 too big.
I agree 6+ is more phablety than a 6s, and I would have taken 5 sized 6s had they made one.
My work is done on a Lenovo Thinkpad laptop. Our firm runs on Windows because civil engineering software we use is exclusively made for those devices.I carry an iPhone 6+ and that probably gets most of my non-work digitial time, but when I’m home its either a MacBook Pro if I’m sitting at a desk or table or an iPad Pro I just bought if I’m in bed.Full disclosure – I’m over 40 years old so the larger and crisper the screen the better!
Very good point. I don’t think I would visually i.d. a 5.5” phone as a phablet.1. iPhone 6 25%2. 0%3. Macbook Pro 70%4. Macbook Pro on train/plane etc. 5%But I look at and work with code all day (and night). So a large retina screen and a laptop with lots of processing power are vital.
once you go big screen you can’t go back. simple. Same with TVs and Computers.Bigger is better. Biggest is best.
Yes, and when your eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, the larger screen size helps. There is a big bifurcation of the world population. A lot of it is over 60, and a lot of it is under 30.
form factor is moving away from a phone – we won’t be holding this thing to our ear at all soon.
I find myself using a 7″ tablet all the time, and I carry a phone just to interface with phone people.
Go for the Real Thing: http://consumer.huawei.com/…
.The convergence in the middle is and has been perfectly predictable.Smartphones get smarter and bigger.Tablets get trimmer and leaner.Suddenly, one day you can’t tell them apart.I have been using Skype with a Bluetooth earpiece for premeditated calling for a long time even when I don’t “look” at the person. Outbound calls only.I tote the Samsung Mega and a brand new Samsung S2 tablet.I leave them together at night hoping they will mate. Last night I heard them whispering and cooing. Won’t be long now.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
It’s not just visibility it writing and the need for a keyboard or not to me.
.You write a lot and so do I. I am still tethered to my desktop. It’s the keyboard. I can fly on a good keyboard.Typing on a tablet or a phone is torture. Barbed wire enema.I am on the verge of a big shuffle. Getting a big Dell 34 inch curved monitor or two and going to get rid of the desktop and go with a smoking fast laptop with a docking station, external SSD backup and all kinds of gadgets.Going to take up exclusive residence in the cloud for everything.The form factor is just so much better.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
We are on parallel paths.New Mac airs have zero ports.Gonna get a small one to carry around and this is forcing me to move everything to the cloud.I welcome this though someone should write a post taking the normal mac user with antiquated brick based time machine habits and move them into today.
We are moved to all cloud for current stuff. Deciding about what happens to the archives. Cloud made it so much easier for all of us to collaborate. The caveat was keeping the growing files sorted clearly. Digital janitor work.
Care to share any details?
Google Docs and Sheets, DropBox, the usual. Some stuff I like to keep off cloud. Will be scanning mountains of paper soon to archive, old tax and docs. The smell of old paper should be reserved for cherished books, not office stuff.Photos are the next to tackle. Saw @bfeld post on that: http://feld.com/archives/20… and Mylio, which I will try.
Thanks.Seems like I”m a good ways there.Also using Slack now cross a few accounts and honestly, liking it a great deal.
Probably not the right place, but would love to hear how people are managing their photos. I assume most here are using Apple Photos/iPhotos, but with Dropbox shutting down their standalone photo app (Carousel) and Google Photos compressing the actually quality of photo, I’m curious where people are headed. Pretty much the only thing I care about having stored/saved/clouded/backed up. Was following along with @bfeld too, and not sure Mylio is the right fit for me.
.One step at a time. I still take a flash drive with me when I go to the mountains. Old habits die slowly.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Whatever you do for backup I highly suggest you also use a disk cloner such as Super Duper to clone your disk.http://www.shirt-pocket.com…What this means is that you could take your laptop, clone it, and then plug that disk into someone elses Mac (your girlfriend/wife etc.) and boot from it. Another example is you are traveling with your one Macbook Air. It gets lost, stolen or damaged or doesn’t boot for some reason. No problem since you made a clone of the disk before leaving for the trip. So you can plug that into someone elses machine or even in a pinch borrow or buy and you are instantly in business w/o having to reconfigure or remember a great deal of shit. Highly recommended. Any portable drive can be used for this. It can also be partitioned so you can clone more than one machine on it or also use it for storage or for another purpose.
New Mac airs have zero ports.Air’s have plenty of ports it’s the 12″ that has only USB-C.http://www.apple.com/mac/co…
lots of good info from you today–thanks!
Have you seen the projected keyboards? They so cool.
.No, I like to pound the Hell out of a keyboard but I will take a look. I wear the letters off keyboards in about a year. Did you know you can buy replacement letters?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
You are like my wasband – keyboards quiver around you. I thought the projected keyboard was great for your ilk. I think you can adjust their size too.
.Size is important!JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
me to.I remember typing class. I loved it as it freed my mind from writing.I was super fast.
Are you on a Mac? If so the only way to go is 27″ Thunderbolt displays. And a 30″ if you can fit that in.By the way security wise (even though everyone does this) hauling around a laptop with your life on it (even if encrypted is a bad idea). Never understood (actually I do understand why they do this) people tying themselves to a laptop like that.General idea would to be to keep anything you need remotely in the cloud or on a colo server in which case the particular machine you are on can be stripped down and not really contain anything of importance. Hence if it gets stolen you don’t have to worry (as much). Plus it’s easily replaceable.Not sure I’d go for the external SSD backup (SSD’s are still flaky) not only do they cost more but the speed factor doesn’t matter (you said “backup”, right?).Make sure you also keep an offsite backup as well. Make sure you verify the backups….
.OK, Mom. I promise to wear sunscreen and I won’t drink the water in Mexico.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
“This trend is driving other trends like the rise of consumption activities on the phone””There’s not a lot new in this data”It might not be new, but its potentially a big, huge, monumental deal.Content platforms, from Vice to Buzzfeed, have had the lion’s share of their users, and thus worth, via web-based platforms that are viewed on screens big enough to enjoy the content, at the time most people are in front of those screens — basically, on your work computer while at work, with post-dinner lap/desktop usage at home coming in second.Back when everyone thought you didn’t have a product without a native app in the app store (are we still in that phase? hope not.) the content companies that won were the ones who didn’t listen to that b.s. and optimized for the web — which also meant growth models heavily reliant on 1) social, since sharing, accessing, and deep-linking into links is 10x easier via the web than in an app, and 2) binging, keeping folks in an endless loop of clicking on 10+ articles in one website visit.A move towards phablets could *possibly* upend that whole system.If our phablets are big enough, we won’t need to look at as many things on our larger work computers — will that also change the fact that 9a – 5p is the time when most content is consumed online?Will I not stay in the clickbait loop as long if I’m shifting back and forth all day to work on my computer and then to look at non-work content on my phone? Will we consume less content at a time? Or possibly even start consuming less overall?And now that content, the last of the big internet activities (including utilities, search, etc.), won’t have most of it’s users’ eyeballs tethered to a stationary screen, someone is going to push the envelope when it comes to app functionality. What will they do? Will one company solve the deep-linking-into-an-app problem? Will many? Will some be left out? Will that kill them? Will others survive by solving a different problem, or creating a new consumption model?When you look at behavior around consuming content, the move to phablets as the norm could be a seismic shift.Or it could not. We’ll see.
That Ericsson report has interesting data about screen size impact on usage patterns. http://www.ericsson.com/res…
I love the way you stated all of this as questions to avoid being tied to a right or wrong opinion on anything. But is any of this clear enough to bet a future strategy on? Otherwise it’s just mental masturbation.
My opinion is that it’s a big deal. How that’ll reveal itself in their future — I don’t have much more than guesses at this point.
ITs a big deal in that the Phab is the mainstream form factor.If what you do does not work on a Phab for some reason, you had better be in a niche market.
I have to disagree, sometimes thinking what the issues are is super important.
I think it’s masturbation when the person making the comments has no particular expertise or has cast opinions over a wide range of areas all at the same time. Which of those is correct and which is actually (and this is important) actionable?So for example let’s go back to prior of the building of the interstate system. The guy who said “once these interstates are built the real estate at the interchanges will be worth a great deal to someone so I will buy up that real estate” made a decision based on that thought and put his money behind it (’cause the little lady was cooking in the kitchen at the time). However to think “one day fast food restaurants will need that RE” would have been a totally speculative stretch since things hadn’t played out to that point. Now otoh if that person had been Ray Kroc and had personal knowledge of the McDonalds brothers I would take the opposite point.All this “Albert Wenger” level thinking goes over my head unfortunately. It’s entirely possible that some of the things that Brandon is saying will matter and will be true the issue is what 10% will matter.Most people and pundits for example didn’t even predict correctly what would happen when we had broadband and the web got super fast and reliable (until it had obviously happened and reached a tipping point..).
Yes, a huge 20/20 hind sight shock is how big and FAST the Internet has become. E.g., no shit Sherlock: Early on a Web site could have a T1 (WOW!, a full T1 line! WOW! For just one Web site! WOW!) line to the Internet, and there backbone links could be T3 lines — GEE, beyond far outer space Captain Kirk!But, for some numbers, IIRC a T1 line was 1.5 Mbps and T3, 45 Mbps. Now some ISPs are offering 50 Mbps for entry level consumer service. My cheap-o service is about 15 Mbps.I was shocked the day I learned that someone had programmed a mainframe to deliver audio streams. Now on consumer Internet, we can get video streams! WOW!I remember a Byte magazine cover with “Ditch your TV” based on the idea we would get TV over the Internet. I did some of the obvious, first arithmetic on data rates and storage sizes and wrote an irate letter to the editor of the mag claiming that TV over the Internet would require many times the data rates, capacities, etc., end to end. My arithmetic was fully correct. My estimate of how long it would take technology to provide the rates — something harder to do with just arithmetic — was much longer than reality.The changes were enormous, server farms, servers, data storage, LAN switches, routers, backbone routers, backbone cables, core routing with the very fast border gateway protocol (BGP), last mile connections, and the users’ computers. At’s a lot’s change-uh. And now can get much of that just via wireless. Good grief.And the changes are continuing: Now much of the best of computer main memory is going for $5/GB. Beyond belief. Samsung is selling a 14 TB 2.5″ SSD — just terrific for one of the back end servers in my startup. My original back of the envelope estimate of the storage I’d need to serve the world was 150 TB, and now could get that in a large tower case. Beyond belief. Soon, the speeds for SSDs will be much faster because as we type the work is being done to let SSDs communicate with the processor essentially like main memory does now. For some applications, especially server side, we’re talking screaming, ear-splitting screaming, fast.I used to live across the street from a hot shot IBM enterprise database salesman, and his biggie wish was for DB/2 transaction rates of 2000 a second. Well, with SSDs, how about add a few zeros to that. At one time, when FedEx was really large, their central computing center had the gigantic, humongous, enormous, jumbo, more adjectives, please, Ma, disk storage space, of please sit down for this, 7 TB. Now, peanuts — can get that in a mid tower case.While eating breakfast this morning, I did an incremental backup to my little Western Digital 2TB USB hard disk drive. Just used a little script I wrote to use just old XCOPY with just the right options — as usual, it worked great.Gotta be a way to make some big bucks out’a such resources, right?Let’s see: Maybe some business wants to do, say, five year strategic financial planning. So they use, say, Excel to set up a spreadsheet with one column for each of the 60 months and one row for each variable. They fill in the cells, some cells with data, some with computational expressions with variables to refer to cells only in previous columns, some cells with estimates of external influences, e.g., interest rates, and some cells with candidate strategic decisions to make over the five years. Then there are some cells in the last column, e.g., the value of the business.So, the mission, and some people have to accept it, is to find the decisions that maximize the value of the business. At this point, with that spreadsheet, that is a reasonably well posed problem in computational applied math.Next, they appreciate that some of the external influences cannot be predicted accurately, e.g., the stock market might be modeled as Brownian motion. So, they using random number generators, they use some means to simulate such influences, reevaluate the spreadsheet a few hundred times, and then get an empirical distribution and an average of the end value of the business.Then they realize that they have been like a football quarterback who called all four plays just on first and 10, and no quarterback would do that. Instead, the quarterback calls each play based on their current situation and some estimates of what might happen and what they might do on plays 2-4.Well, the business guy wants much the same — at each month, wants the decisions found that do the best based on their current situation and what they might do in the future months.Well, there’s some math for that. I did my Ph.D. dissertation in it. Bellman also worked in that field. So has E. Dynkin long at Cornell.For nearly all problems of realistic size, the computational demands of this math has long been far beyond what computers could do. But, now, with SSDs, many core processors, maybe a big chunk of AWS, maybe not anymore!Now, there’s a cloud application!
“Sometimes we find that a good question is more important than a good answer.” — Richard Bellman, prof of applied math, engineering, medicine, etc., contributor to stochastic optimal control, did his Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton on stability of solutions of differential equations (too often, there isn’t any), author of quite a text on advanced topics in linear algebra, etc.
> 1) social, since sharing, accessing, and deep-linking into links is 10x easier via the web than in an app, and 2) binging, keeping folks in an endless loop of clicking on 10+ articles in one website visit.Yup. Just what I wanted for my startup. Look, Ma, no apps! Just HTTP, HTML, CSS, a little JS, and simple Web pages!
The only thing worse than a cracked phablet, is a sandblasted windshield at sunrise.Trends are misleading. There was a time when the trend was all bellbottom jeans. Yes, phones are more than fashion, but I would bet that if it was as easy as going back to straight legs, many would. Every day, I hear people with phablets longing for something they can carry in their pocket.
Everyday (well, almost… at least once a week), I get asked about the brand and model of my 7″ phablet. Wich does fit in my pocket, just don’t dress Emo.
I was looking at data from a bunch of startups I am invested in. In the beginning of 2015, some of them had traffic that was 80% from web, 20% from mobile. At the end, 60% web, 40% mobile. The hard thing about mobile is optimizing the UX for mobile which sounds a lot easier than it is.
Designing for mobile isn’t hard for someone who knows how to design for mobile.Too bad everyone in the world thinks they’re a designer…
I work with a young designer, he is really good. He learned his art doing web design, so when designing for mobile, specially mobile apps we argue a lot about what kind of interactions are ‘correct’. Designing for mobile apps is not the same as designing for mobile web. Recently we somewhat agreed on using a long vertical scrolling strip, not a web container, but almost. It is hard to win a design discussion with someone that designs his own tatoos and arrives the office on a board.
Back in my “interacting with devs” days, I used the Mom Test: “Will your mom be able to use that instinctively ?”. Ageist and sexist, but got the point across. Might have to graduate to grandma these days ^^
Ageist and sexistI think it’s generally a good idea to get away from apologizing for things in that way. That’s my opinion. After all if it didn’t ring true as an example it wouldn’t be something that you needed to apologize for.
You might want to go the other way too. Its amazing to observe toddlers and kids using tablets, human curiosity in its primal form.
“Does your app handle drool rejection” ? :-p
No kidding. You forgot soup and sticky hands. I secretly wipe the screens with Lysol from time to time.BTW, if anyone out there want good games for kids ages 2 to 4, try some games from the Toca Boca suite ( http://tocaboca.com ). It is a cool swedish studio that was looking for investors a few months ago through the Raine Group.
I don’t know either of you, or the situation, but if you’re having grand debates over scrolling strips, that’s not likely to be a good sign.Page hierarchy, clarity of information, and user flow are the design elements worth big debates. The rest is small potatoes, and highly subjective — and when you challenge a designer on stuff like that, as a non-designer, you find yourself in an unwinnable debate with a very annoyed person who probably has better taste, which is what that stuff comes down to anyway.My two cents. Take it or leave it.
Not everybody can afford to “hire the best lawyer” though Brandon.
True. I actually favor simplicity and locality in UX design, which usually leads to flat hierarchies, but there are a lot of small potatoes as you say.
.Everyone in business thinks they are a designer and every doctor thinks he knows how to run a restaurant.Stand clear.Well, except for me who knows great design and how to run a restaurant. Headed to see the shrink in a few minutes.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
every doctor thinks he knows how to run a restaurant.Was at a restaurant last Saturday night that was located at the intersection of two major roads with decent access and drive by. It was a greek restaurant. The group that opened it formerly had an Italian restaurant at the same site. I guess it didn’t do to well so they closed that and opened a greek restaurant. The food at the greek restaurant was outstanding. However the service and even the perkiness of the waitress was poor. Contrasted to another chain type restaurant in our area (Redstone Grill) where the service is always perky good and attentive (but not overbearing) and the food is “pretty good”. Redstone is always packed. This greek place won’t be around much longer because apparently the management doesn’t know enough (and they do own other restaurants) to hire attentive staff. After all what Italian restaurant (I am assuming the food there was good) can’t do well at the intersection of two major roads with an attractive layout inside? Only thing left is the service.There is another greek restaurant that we go to which is roughly 50 miles away. The owner is always onsite and the service is always good.
.Greeks know how to run restaurants. It is in their blood.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
There are only 2 types of restaurant owners in small town western Canada: Chinese or Greek.If you are in an Italian restaurant in Moose Jaw, the chances of its owner being a paisan is < 10%!
Lol
I hope you don’t fall for designer’s squared plates at your restaurant. Let’s not talk about squared glasses. As overengineering exists, so does overdesign.
Running a restaurant is easy, great food; decent value, adequate service.
All those are reliant on staff, and that is why it is not easy to run a restaurant.
Nightmare to run anything in the hospitality business.The weakest link is the lowest cost labor and there is simply no way to change that.
but there is: good pay for good workers. It’s very clear in Parisian restaurants older and higher-end establishments have much better waiters than cheaper and newer ones.
You have a different point of view.There is 5+ people in the production chain to every waiter on the floor.Wages are horrid for them in general wherever it may be.
I might disagree with the older establishments and waiters having better service, I find many very snotty.I have thought it would be interesting to say proudly on the front door we pay all staff $20/hr and only have the best quality ingredients, and list them, and the vendors.Now the issue is that really you need labor and food to both be 30% of sales to cover overhead. So you just increased your prices by more than 50% (labor by 30%+ and food by 15%)Is that do-able?? In the right few markets yes. But you still need to manage the hell out of everything. Soon that staff is going to forget about that raise, and the vendors are going to try and make money by giving subpar ingredients.
Having worked in the past with the level and quality of employee that would typically work at a restaurant (front or back of house as they say) in an entirely different business (that involved ever changing and different “orders” all ripe for error), it’s a matter of riding them like children and keeping on a short leash. Also limiting the severity and degree of fuckups that can and do enevitably happen. This assumes all other factors (food, costs) are in order and they actually show up to do the job.Anyone who isn’t detailed oriented and doesn’t notice things will probably fail.In these types of businesses typically getting business isn’t the issue. It’s keeping the business. That’s the reason there is opportunity the other guy eventually is fucking up. If the business were easy (and not subject to the constraint that you mentioned) it would be hard to pull a customer from someone else.That said it must be kind of cool to run the type of business that gets people who actually graduated from a top level school working for you (or dropped out or met the filter) that are young, motivated and have a brain and desire to do a good job.
They have their own issues too. Actually bigger ones because they are not so simple.
Did you read the latest on Zuckerberg?http://www.geek.com/apps/ma…I read this in the WSJ last night. I think he is having some kind of a crisis. He needs to prove he is as smart or smarter than the people that work for him is my quick take. [1] Or he is bored (how can you be bored and be the head of a large company like that it’s beyond me). In any case it’s almost without precedent for someone running such a big company and having so many responsibilities to literally waste time on this (even if it’s just a hobby if that’s the case we don’t need to know about his train set).[1] And he probably isn’t and he feels insecure about it. My guess is that if you are Facebook, Google et all you have some pretty heavy hitters there not just random Harvard graduates who were in the right place at the right time and learned php. Not taking away from Zuck for what he did but let’s face it the filter at those companies is pretty intense and the first guy doesn’t have to go through the filter, right?
Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg.. it is a pattern, not chance. If you really want to change things it is more likely that you will do so without formal training, your mind free as it gets. I think that this freedom is what drives these people, and once they are freed from financial burdens, more so. They do not need formal training and probably are the smartest people in any board meeting, so what does he have to prove? My guess is that they just have fun exploring and tinkering, just the same as Stark does in his high tech lab.
I believe that dentist believe that can be commercial RE owners.Lawyers are too diverse to pigeon hole their outside business interests?
.The professional investment cycle amongst real estate developers who have ever made it to the paywindow:1. When the dentists get in, get out.2. When the institutions get out, get in.Repeat.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
So, what was the shrink advice this time? I know that this is private stuff, but you have not signed a NDA do you? Am I being microagressive?
.The shrink said to be careful of strange people on the Internet as I am fragile and susceptible to damage from the slightest provocation.She reminded me that I am a veteran and therefore to be very careful about my gun ownership or she will have to report me.She said to externalize my anger.Where do you live, BTW?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
*laughs*Luckily at 4,744 safe miles south of you, in Santiago, so choose someone else for your therapy. Suddenly Donald’s wall sounds like a good idea. 🙂
Back in the day (when I was in printing and graphic arts world) you had two types of graphic artists. The good ones who work at high end agencies, and the ones that worked for printers or even copy shops.The problem isn’t that people don’t know how to design for mobile. The problem is the people who are hiring people and paying money for design don’t know the difference between good design and bad design. A good example on the scale of a large corporation could be comparing Comcast or Microsoft to Apple or any luxury brand where the top brass know enough to know good design from bad design.
“The problem is the people who are hiring people and paying money for design don’t know the difference between good design and bad design.”*head nods and applause*
This was not my experience as they have always been many layers of graphic artists and art directors, independents and of course in house.When you had your printing business I was most likely buying packaging and collateral for 20-40m pieces a year.I did press checks in every part of the globe and always brought my art director along.
So who was doing the art for your collateral? In house art department, third party designer, or the art people who worked at the printer?
For packaging, I always had an agency who packaging including the drop test stuff, with all the variations of global design.In house art director managed them when we got big. Prior to that me.For iterations on the packaging it was done in house though in some locations, contractors did it.Was less complex for collateral and chockis and chanel POP stuff.I had forgotten the thrill (and terror) of signing off and letting a million boxes be run.And yup, there were screw ups.
I probably wasn’t clear and shouldn’t have added “high end”. What I meant to say was that good designers typically don’t work for printers (and especially smaller printers maybe the largest obviously have good designers or outliers at any size of course).What you are saying doesn’t seem to dispute that:”I had an agency””In house art director”When proofing, always remember what I called “chunking”. More of a chance of a word that you know well being spelled incorrectly (street name, city name, product name) (or some graphic aspect being wrong) then something which is odd or unique which you will check letter by letter and think about (not being on autopilot).
memory lane stuff…work is way more interesting now honestly. it’s why i do it.
Never artists at the printers.
An interesting thing I’ve noticed is that coders in the Boston area often specifically disclaim design, UI, and UX in their skillets. It is good to know strengths and weaknesses but sometimes shitty design (or any design) is better than no code being written.
‘but sometimes shitty design (or any design) is better than no code being written’ – absolutely disagree. I am someone who had listened to users for hours about their experience. When you get to listen feedback about bad design while in front of a screen with a desperate user showing you his experience, all you want is to disappear overwhelmed with shame.
The designer’s plight: something (pushed live) is better than nothing (pushed live).Bu when the tech is commoditized and everyone can, say, open an ecomm shop, design and brand become the differentiators, and tech innovation plateaus.
Also, “designing” for mobile is a much broader skill set than we often ascribe to designers. Almost like asking a graphic designer to design a new bicycle.
Ask Deiter Rams and he’ll tell you that the best designers can design for many different kinds of use cases. He himself designed products from furniture to phones.Anyone who designs for screen-based interactions should be able to do it for any screen. If they truly know what they’re doing.
I 100% agree. However, our institutions of design and education are turning out way more specialists than generalists. Mike Monteiro has a lot to say on the topic.
I think specialization is how you get good design out of more designers.Not everyone can be great. Maybe 10% are truly great, and the other 90% are hacking it.For those who hack it, if they can’t be all around great designers, it’s easier to learn and get good at one aspect. Say, flat design. Or blog layouts. Or 3D prints or wooden furniture or whatever.Same with developers. Great developers can pull a Mark Zuckerberg and build Iron Man’s Jarvis in his home. Others stick to iOS, or Ruby, or something smaller that they can wrap their heads around.I’m all for specialization, as it puts more people to work.But the better folks can grasp more than one type of design.
Its called being a pro.
The book About Face by Alan Copper (father of Visual Basic, pioneer of many areas of design, still going strong), came up lately as a mention in an HN thread. I had bought and read the 1st edition years ago. It’s now at Edition 4. A classic. Though I’m not a designer (in the UI/UX sense, only software design), I appreciated the book. The concept of affordances was interesting. Also scroll bars that have both arrowheads at the same end – makes for less mouse movement. Later I read somewhere that some OS or platform implements that – cannot remember which.His firm: http://cooper.com
You made me look.. my Win10 scrollbars have arrowheads… not very useful with a mouse scrollwheel though.
Sorry, Alan Cooper, not Copper.
Rememver your first painting class? Everyone is a designer ! Some are just better than others.Everyone is not however UX expert. This requires a scientific mindset.
And a programmer … O-o
I agree. I haven’t used our iPad in 2 years. My son uses it for Minecraft! I love my galaxy note 5.
How soon do we go to flip phones, and powerful tablets?
Build a time-traveling car and go back to the 90s with their Nokia phones and MS+Fujitsu tablets ?
Ask Adele. :-Phttps://pbs.twimg.com/media…
Many things about Adele are retro.
Nokia was my first and only love. I can still hear the frog ring tone in my head
What’s puzzling is that OEMs got shy at 5.5″. Samsung in particular, known for experimenting every which way, is failing to offer flagships above 5.7″, and not very serious about its midrange Mega line. In the 6-7″ range, right now in the West it’s either the Huawei Mate, or the Huawei Mediapad x2. Both nice, but a bit of choice would be appreciated, especially with Huawei going high-end these days. Especially when China has a lot more option (LeTV, Gionee elife E8…)
Is this chart very useful without the “phablet” availability and penetration in the market? if this is the first year the iPhone 6/6s are available (and sell well as a % of overall mobile device population) it would not be very surprising to see growth in that segment. I think without that extra data we cannot really conclude that consumer behavior is moving.
I can count on one hand the number of phablets (at least visually discernable as such) I see in a month. But I guess the data don’t lie!
the majority of devices today are still sub-phablet according to the charts. it’s the quantity of time and volume of content and their growth for the large segment that stands out. watching 2-5 minutes of video in “downtimes” are perfectly good ways to consume vast amounts of video. and below 5 inches watching video seems less enjoyable. same goes for multimedia and long-form content. all of which add up in terms of time spent.
no more tablets on the London tube for over a year (or two, I don’t remember)
People hide them so as not to be shamed?You are young – just turned 50 and it makes a huge diff to be able to zoom in on that huge screen.
I do love you for thinking I’m young (or being fooled by the lighting in my picture). I totally understand the screen size issue. Retina saved my eyeballs! I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I’m a phablet owner.
just got back from europe and noticed fashion styles leaning more to jackets; as well in music videos. could it be that phablets are just a little too big for pants pockets? i’ve gotten used to my note4 but frankly it often sticks out of my back pocket and is a major reason i’m wearing sports jackets year round; even if just to cover the phone that’s sticking out of the pants pocket. btw, note4 at 5.7 seems like the goldilocks solution with everything else being too small or too big when I hold or view it.also, the charts have to be closely read and what they do say is that the majority are still on small and medium form size, but watch out networks when that majority shifts to larger phones! when it comes to networks time is less important than volume. text x 1000 = audio/multimedia. audio/multimedia x 1000 = video. we’re just starting on the video mobile consumption curve, relatively speaking.
or it could be that this winter is not too bad this year, plus it is so common that we get attached to a new toy for a while, then we forget about it. tablets seem to have lost the battle with laptops, and my bet is that watches won’t even get to see the glory that tablets enjoyed. there are few things that enter our lives we keep for good.
I’ve always preferred a smaller device (easier to carry) but found I didn’t use them as much. Instead I’d reach for a tablet any time I wanted to do anything real (read, type and not just glance).This year I bought an iPhone 6s+ (Apple’s 5.5″ phone). My reasoning at the time is that I need to use the big phone for a while to see how it functions for development purposes, which is different than the tablets and smaller phones. I also forced myself to stop using a tablet for a while.I didn’t think I would but I actually like the bigger phone, use it more than I ever used a phone before, and can’t see switching back to a smaller phone. Even when I added a tablet back to the rotation I now reach for my phone for things I used to reach for the tablet. There are some inconveniences but the benefits outweigh those for me.
Fred, no mention here of one of the pluses of 6s and 6+ : contactless pay.I had my 6s a week before spending holidays in London, where ApplePay and contactless pay is everywhere. It’s dreamy with TouchID. It must be sublime with the watch.Now I’m waiting for the US to catch up, where they have barely moved to chip readers.
Considering Android Pay in various incarnations has been available for years, it’s not so much a plus as one less minus ^^
‘one less minus’, I like that :). yep, payment apps have been available for years, but people don’t seem too keen to adopt.
contactless is everywhere indeed and it is great. funny that I never see anyone paying with their phone, we are paying contactless with the card. this confirms the low adoption numbers for paying via phone. Btw, I was really impressed with apple contactless sign so spread in London, I wonder how they managed that, although it doesn’t seem to change the fact that people continue paying with their cards vs phones.
It’s very simple. We in London use contactless for the tube/subway and buses. Apple pay saves having to pull a debit card or the Oyster prepaid transport card out of our pocket. The phone is already in our hand.UK is the largest user of contactless payments in Europe according to VISA a couple of months ago.
we in London 🙂 use contactless for any payment up to £30 (not only tube and buses). I just don’t see people using their phones for contactless, they continue using their cards
Ha! Is this where I admit I never look at anyone else on the tube? All I know is that my wife and I both use our phones in the tube or most other places – shops and cafes at lunchtime. In fact, i regularly forget to take any card out at all.You have inspired me to check what friends do. :-)L
depending on your work and interests, this may prove a very useful exercise. I remember when everyone was reading Harry Potter, another time when everyone was reading Gone Girl (this is how I decided to make an exception and read fiction, didn’t regret that book exception); I also remember a few years ago when so many people were using tablets (not any more) and even the time when for the first time so many people were using ipods and I thought to myself that Apple must be doing very well. It is easy to spot trends if you look around. it is also easy to tell trends from false trends (a lot of noise in the tech media, not supported by real life evidence) – here I include IoT and phone payments. The data published at the end of 2015 confirms that IoT remains a hope for the future rather than a confirmed success.
I am already convinced about that we will never see Fred wearing an Apple T shirt, even during his iPhone cycles.
Here’s to hoping some company will actually make phones or phone-laptop combos with foldable/rollable screens soon (as opposed to occasionally displaying related concepts at CES without production plans). I prefer a bigger screen but just can’t get with a phone that won’t fit into my pocket or clutch purse when necessary. I use laptop/tablet for any extended browsing, especially where graphics are involved. So, nyet to phablets.
Same here. Also why I’m waiting to ditch my small smartphone and laptop until the web commits to content that’s truly device agnostic. Maybe even holdout until we get proper hologram technology.
Right? You’d think by now, platform wars would somehow be over and we’d have “publish once, view from everywhere” in full effect.
It’s super interesting – one thing that strikes me is that content is still essentially tied to ad revenue built on platforms that aren’t agnostic (for a host of reasons, technologically and competitively). There is a lot of adtech money invested in the last 10 years and they are having a very hard time pivoting.
Ahh, online ads, the affliction that will not flatline/pivot quietly. There are other ways to make money online (and more to come) but most entities don’t want to explore them or organic growth, for that matter.I sometimes wonder what would happen if: A cloud-based utility with ridiculous ease-of-use that enabled tech-savvy people to update browser settings for their non-tech networks came about (this currently only happens in an office setting). I.e. sys admin for the masses – whenever your web browser plus tools like AdBlock and ghostery updated, everyone in your network (e.g. family/friends) automatically do too. That would drop ad viewership exponentially, while warding off related malware on a greater scale too.
It’s somewhat technically difficult to achieve that, but I agree it should be a goal. People don’t learn from history, also they have vested interests. See 1) Unix wars, 2) Microsoft vs. the rest of the world (possibly changing a bit now), and going back even earlier, 3) IBM vs. the BUNCH, etc.
Should have defined BUNCH:https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…I don’t go back that far, but had read about them.Old computer industry history (both hardware and software) can be pretty interesting, also comparing historical actions and outcomes of past contenders with the present ones.
rollable TV @ CES this year, I believe.
Indeed; this time by LG. Every few years, some iteration of e-ink/flex screen is paraded as if it’ll be in common use by the next year. You believe so, since flat screens took over quickly, only to leave you high and dry as nothing goes into production.
Good point indeed. Though I haven’t used them, I sometimes feel that I want the convenience of a phablet (as in 5.5 to 6 incher) with the larger size of a tablet. Foldable/rollable (also unbreakable and unscratchable) screens could help with that.
Growth rates are likely high because phablets were starting from a smaller base. The form factor distribution graphic is interesting, but I wonder what their assumptions are based on.
Early bird catches the worm. ;)Edit: @disqus = weird. Was a reply to @JimHirshfield
2015 tablet growth is a big step not organic trend. For the first time Apple fans could buy a phablet, and some did.Not convinced we’ll see phablet share keep growing like it did in 2015.
I couldn’t agree more. I used to always think I will never go Phablet and was very happy with a 4.7 inch screen size. I have an iPhone 6 (4.7inch) right now and before that had an HTC One (4.7inch).But now I really need more screen real estate. My new phone this year will be an iPhone 7 Plus. I am really hoping for some kind of a new design for the home button to reduce the device size 🙂
The term ‘phablet’ needs to go. They’re phones.
Can we stop calling them phones? Phone is one app. Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, Google Voice, etc all have voice-calling functionality which is still different from a phone.Just go with mobile. They come in different shapes and sizes.
Totally agree. My attempts to rightfully rename Smartphones to PoCoCos (for Pocket Connected Computers) and reflect the diminishing importance of the “phone” part compared to the “computer” part fell flat for some reason, though.
On the other hand PoCoCo has legs as a cereal name.
They are mobile personal computers, but Jobs told us we were in the post-PC era and most marketeers agreed. Don’t sound very cool must agree.
If I wanted to carry a brick around I would have become a mason.Apple 6 and mini-iPad work fine for me.
iPhone 6+ is the best computing device I’ve ever owned.
Always look to what Koreans are doing. By 2013 more than 40 percent were using Phablets already. They lead the way in this regard.
I know that at http://HockeyBias.com my push to make the curated content look great on phablets has been well received. I’ve heard some positive feedback since we redid our website’s UI in a ‘responsive design’ manner.
I lo e my galaxy mega 6.3 it just plain rocks.
Terrific! My startup uses HTTP to send HTML, CSS, and a tiny bit of JS. So, right, my startup is a Web site.So, right, I need a mobile strategy, Well, my mobile strategy has been mostly just screens are each exactly 800 pixels wide with large fonts and high contrast. While in principle, my screens can be used in a window as narrow as just 300 pixels, on any really small screen, the UX would be less good than I want.But, on a phablet — no worries! My UI/UX will be fine! So, mobile strategy — check that box, and, look Ma, the same on Apple, Google, Windows — any device with a Web browser up to date as of, say, 5 years ago.Gee, HTTP, HTML, CSS, JS and Web browsers as a uniform, universal platform for UIs; just as I thought, expected, designed, and coded for, and, now, the world has come around to join me! Welcome world!Watches? Without funny glasses, don’t see any hope for watches! Yes, we can make computers, pixels, and screens smaller but not eyeballs!Besides, nearly all techies are men who really like the big, pretty eyes of pretty girls and certainly don’t want microscopic eyes or great eyes covered with funny glasses! To heck with watches.
For the Gaussian, normal, or bell shaped distribution, that is not so difficult if, as in this example, can arrange the data on the X-axis. E.g., just sort the data much as apparently is done in the stage positions in the presidential debates, that is, sort the data from high to low, put the highest in the center, and, going down the rest of the sorted list, append the data alternating left and right.For more, for continuous data, to be technical, from a probability measure absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure (don’t ask!), a simple transformation will yield data with a Gaussian distribution.Actually, there are several good and important reasons for data that is at least fairly accurately Gaussian, but that discovery 100+ years ago got too many people, especially in educational statistics 100 years ago, to make Gaussian nearly a quasi-religion. We shouldn’t do that. Why? Because it would be wrong and, possibly, lead to errors in practice.
The problem I find with this study is that the major players in the mobile industry drive what people use. If apple went to smaller phones again, people would buy them and use them more. All major players are making phablets and that’s why they are predominantly used.
Ha ha! Love it.
Eliminates confusion about Mofo charts, buying/recharging/upgrading your MoFo, etc.
Personally, I want a 4.6″ screen. The only reason I do my browsing on a larger device is because *I have no options smaller than 5″*. On top of that, to get good hardware, one now *must* get a phablet (if you’re getting an Android phone).
I wish Flurry could layer in ASP data into the Forecast:Say, units sold within pricing tiers, <$200 | $200-$400 | $401-600 | >$600. I’m sure people are moving up the pricing ladder over time, which plays into Apple’s strategy.
MoFo FTW! :)Laptops are mobile devices, true — but so are cars. For me the distinction has always been not the type of device but the type of network it connects to. Laptop on wifi has different range of motion/utility than laptop on MiFi over cellular network. Same goes for other mobile devices: the same iPad model behaves is used differently if it’s permaconnected via cellular or if it’s wi-fi only.
Yes, phablet give more chances to interact and work with the device. http://www.mejorphablet.com