Projection: phablet shipments to hit 175M in 2014, surpassing portable PCs, and 318M in 2015, surpassing tablets
A Future Fueled by Phablets - Worldwide Phablet Shipments to Surpass Portable PCs in 2014 and Tablets by 2015, According to IDC — According to a new forecast …
Context & Ripple Effects
This forecast is the third act in a running serial of category-cannibalization calls. The tablet wave was charted early — 180 million tablets forecast for 2014 back in 2011 — then revised upward through IDC's December 2012 raise before analysts pivoted to what tablets were eating: Canalys projected in late 2013 that half of all PCs shipped in 2014 would be tablets, and Gartner's July 2014 forecast put total device shipments past 2.4 billion units with tablets overtaking PCs in 2015.
IDC's new numbers extend the same substitution logic one layer down the size curve: at 175 million units this year, phablets pass portable PCs a year ahead of tablets doing so, and at 318 million in 2015 they pass tablets themselves. The breadth of pickup — PC World, CNET, Quartz alongside Apple-focused outlets like 9to5Mac, AppleInsider and Cult of Mac — shows the story landing well beyond the Android-heavy vendors that currently dominate large-screen phones.
First-order effects
- Vendors shipping large-screen smartphones gain a second demand pool beyond phone upgraders, while portable PC makers face a direct unit-for-unit substitute at the top of their price band in 2014.
- Tablet vendors' growth runway narrows on paper: IDC has them being passed by phablets just one year after tablets overtake portable PCs.
Second-order effects
- Display and component supply chains shift weight toward 5-to-7-inch panels, pressuring tablet makers to differentiate on productivity features rather than screen size alone.
- Carriers and retailers get a single large-screen device that serves both phone and small-tablet use cases, squeezing attach rates for companion tablets sold alongside smartphones.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the phone-tablet-PC taxonomy analysts have used since 2010 dissolves into a screen-size continuum, forcing forecast houses like IDC and Gartner to redraw category boundaries they have been reporting against for years.
- PC incumbents' remaining defensible ground migrates further upmarket toward detachables and notebooks with keyboard economics, accelerating the structural decline of the standalone portable PC segment.
The trend: Mobile device categories are collapsing into a single screen-size spectrum, with phablets positioned to absorb demand from both tablets and portable PCs within two years.