Tablet phone thriving

BI Chinese station reported on June 29

Worldwide year-round shipments of smartphones and tablets other than flat-panel and tablet phones

Tablet phone thriving

The era of 3.5 or 4.0 inch screen phones is over. In the past few quarters, the entire smartphone market has moved to the tablet category.

BI Intelligence defines a tablet as a smartphone with a screen size between 5 inches and 7 inches.

While this is a broad definition, it still captures one of the most important trends in the smartphone market over the past few years - like the Galaxy S4 (5 inches) launched by Samsung in 2013, the S5 (5.1 Inch) Such mobile phones are very popular with consumers.

To a certain extent, it is the tremendous success of the Galaxy series that has forced the major mobile phone makers to fully infuse the tablet phone market.

The iPhone product line has so far adopted a smaller screen size, but there are rumors that Apple will introduce two big-screen phones later this year, with a screen size of 5.5 inches that falls under our definition of a tablet phone category.

In a new BI Intelligence report, we surveyed these big screen trends and gave our forecast for the tablet handset market. We also explored the changes that the tablet has taken to the smart phone market and its eroded tablet needs.

Tablet PC shipments worldwide forecast

Here are some key points on the tablet handset market:

Tablet is the fastest growing smartphone category. We expect the global CAGR of flat panel handsets to grow at a CAGR of 27% in the next five years, almost double the CAGR (15%) of the smartphone market over the same period.

• Flat-panel cellphone shipments will reach 1.5bn by 2019, accounting for 59% of global smartphone shipments, up from 35% this year's market expectation.

· Tablet phones will erode the tablet market. Demand for tablets is on the decline. By 2019, tablet phones worldwide shipments will reach 3 times the tablet PC.

Tablet smartphone acceleration has driven consumer spending on visual-oriented social media and messaging applications. Due to the larger screen space, these phones encourage people to stay active on content-centric social networks and applications, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Line. More than half of the activity on tablet phones depends on social networks.

The report includes:

· Full-year Shipments Forecast for Flat Panel Phone Market from 2014 to 2019.

Explore the growing popularity of tablet phones and its impact on the overall smartphone market.

· Revised our previous expectations of the tablet market to reflect the demand for tablets by tablet phones.

• Summarize the social media-centric behavior of tablet users, linking them to the rise of vision-driven social networking and communications applications. (David)