Phablets are smartphones with screen sizes between 5.5 inches and seven inches. And, according to market research company IDC, 175 million of them will ship this year, beating the 170 million portable PCs expected to ship this year.
It’s a horrible word, phablet.
But next year the devices will ship 318 million units, more than the 233 million tablets IDC predicts will ship in 2015.
Melissa Chau, research manager at IDC, said Apple is expected to announce it’s entering the fray in the next couple of the weeks. And by 2018, she said, phablets will grow market share from 14 percent now to 32.2 percent then.
Average selling prices for phablets and smartphones are set to drop and will dominate the portable sector in 2018, with 75.6 percent of the market.
