Year of the Phablet?

That's right. A phablet. I'm sure many of you haven't heard of it. It's also called a phonelet, a tweener, or super smartphone. It's a combination of a phone and a tablet, and people say this will make both obsolete. Tablets and smartphones are relatively new, and yet they're already obsolescent. How can this be?

 The first ever phablet was the Dell Streak, but wasn't acknowledged until 2010. The Samsung came out with the Samsung Galaxy Note, a surprising success. Companies that produce phones and tablets like Apple or Samsung believe this will be a cooperate-smashing success. 2013 will be the year of the phablet, no doubt. Others believe its pointless due to the fact that it's too small to fit in your pocket, like a smartphone, or too small to be a tablet, like an iPad. Companies who are looking into making these phablets say that the screen size could be up to 5 in. or more.

However ridiculous or astounding these may turn out to be, they may actually have a good room for marketing. According to a Barclays study and report, "The market for phablets will quadruple in value to $135 billion dollars. Shipments of gadgets that are 5 inches or bigger in screen size will surge by nearly nine-fold to $228 million dollars during the same period, though estimates vary because no one can agree on where smartphones stop and where phablets begin."

There's no way that phablets can take over the dominated world run by smartphones, right? Or, if they end up actually taking over the world, there's no way it can happen soon, right? Wrong. In a Yahoo! poll of 5,000 people, more than half of the people voted for the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 than the recent iPhone 5. It's hard to deny that phablets have already started their domination.

Are you in love with the phablet? Are you in love with your hard earned money? Well, you'll have to make a decision. A good phablet runs for just over $300. Some good ones are under $300. Bad for consumers, great for companies. Samsung's fourth quarter profit was a whopping $8.1 billion dollars. How? It sold 500 cell phones, tablets, and phablets every minute. Samsung and its phones and phablets are starting to dominate the market. The iPhone 5 from Apple Inc. was the only phone released from Apple, with the usual features and just a bigger screen. meanwhile, Samsung was having tons of fun bombarding the market with 37 variants of phones or phablets. 

Samung's other bestseller, The Samsung Galaxy S3, is also considered to be a phablet by some. When the iPhone 4S was released against Samsung's Galaxy S3, the fourth quarter market shows that the Galaxy S3 won that battle. The Samsung S series is expected to revamped the S3 to be released during the first quarter.

So is this really the Year of the Phablet? Are we going to be dominated by larger screens? The market for phablets is starting to grow as all the other phone companies rush to produce their own phablets to try to increase their profit.