Seven-inch tablet computers are witnessing a shrinking percentage in global shipments due to competition from emerging big-screen phones or phablets.
This is according to market analyst firm IDC, which points out that in 2014, seven-inch tablets - such as the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, Google Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HDX 7, and the LG G Pad V410 7-Inch 4G LTE, among others - dominated the tablet market with a 64.1% share of global tablet shipments. However, the firm notes the ratio fell to 57.7% last year.
Jean Philippe Bouchard, tablets research director at IDC, says during this year's Consumer Electronics Show, almost none of the big tablet brand names announced new seven- or eight-inch tablet development plans.
IDC believes that with the emergence of big 5.5-inch-plus screen phones, such as iPhone 6 and 6S, the Samsung Galaxy S6 models and the recently released Huawei Mate 8, consumers may ditch the seven-inch tablet computers in favour of larger-screen smartphones.
As a result, most of the major tablet vendors have slowed their pace in the development of seven-inch or larger tablets, the firm says.
The IDC predicts sales of small tablets in global shipments will fall to 43% this year.
"Phablets have and will continue to impact sales of smaller screen size tablets," says Bouchard.
"The value proposition of a seven-inch slate tablet is considerably reduced when end-users also carry a large smartphone."
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