The ‘New’ Mobile Device—the Phablet

“Apple’s competitors are finally doing a better job of making the kinds of phones that customers want,” according to a section of a New Yorker article about Apple’s financial fate. “The most notable of these is an oversized phone dubbed “the phablet”—Samsung’s Galaxy Note is the leader in the category. The phablet is bigger than a traditional phone, smaller than a tablet, and as ungainly as its name—too big to fit comfortably in your pocket and cumbersome for making calls. In the U.S., the phablet is still very much a niche product, but overseas, particularly in Asia, sales exploded in the second half of last year. And, unfortunately for Apple, there is no iPhablet. The analyst Peter Misek, a managing director at Jefferies & Company, told me that he had been an Apple optimist until last fall. ‘We assumed, as Apple did, that a buyer of a smartphone would also be a buyer of a tablet, so you’d have one device for mobility and one for surfing the Net,’ he said. ‘But what we’re finding is that, especially in lower-income areas, people can’t or don’t want to buy both. So they’re buying the one device that combines the two.’ Read more.

How could this device affect digital marketing? Advertisers could enlarge the size of display ads, miniaturized for mobile phones. They also could create more dynamic videos that viewers could play on devices with screens larger than those on smartphones. It could lead to easier navigation and viewing from tweats, emails, and links on advertisements to brand home pages or social media sites. In theory, it might lead to less eye fatigue, making it easier for the viewer to stay connected. The problem: How would an individual carry it around? Would they want to? Women could stick the device in a pocketbook, but men usually forgo such items. Will men just hold them? Or will men end up getting two devices—a smartphone for walking around and a phablet for work since they can stick it in their valise? If men get two devices, then how is that different from the current market of individuals owning a smartphone and a tablet? And for marketers, if men and women do carry the devices in cases—whether a pocket book or valise—will they use it as frequently as a smart phone, which they can slide out more easily?

I have written these ideas and asked these questions to show how a mind can work with new data. Since the phablet will not enter the U.S. market for a few months, no one can predict with any accuracy how Americans will perceive the product and, eventually, how they will use it. If you read the questions carefully, if you think about them for more than the time it takes to read them, and if you connect it to the information you currently know about Internet marketing, you can come up with some unique concepts.