Its Official – Phablets Are Lame

The mobile app analytics company Flurry, released an article breaking down the state of the mobile app development market. According to the report, mid-sized smartphones like the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy are dominating the developer market while Phablet devices are lagging far behind.

Phablets are mobile devices that are smaller than a tablet and bigger than a smartphone. So far they have shown disappointing sales, making up only 2% of all mobile devices. Mobile app developers have taken notice of the poor market penetration and stayed away from developing apps for the devices. Phablets appear to make up an insignificant part of the device installed base, and do not show disproportionally high enough app usage to justify support. Tablets, on the other hand show the most over-indexing of usage, especially in games.

As an iPad app developer in Los Angeles we do not foresee phablets taking more than a small portion of the mobile device market. Therefore, mobile app developers like ourselves will likely not rush to develop apps for this new platform. App developers tend to move into new markets that show strong growth potential, like the Android, iPad, and iPhone yet shy away from smaller less lucrative platforms like Blackberry and the Windows phone.