> That the shift was not a reaction to consumer interest, but rather in anticipation of it.
When it comes to Apple, I believe it was not anticipation, but overreaction to the Galaxy Note. Phablets quickly became popular in East Asia[1], and "pocketability" turned out to be a complete non-issue for the many women who carry around a bag all day. But instead of just serving the phablet market, they've gone all-in on it.
That said, I absolutely agree that companies often converge on weird standards. I'm glad that the glossy screen hype seems to be mostly over, but now we're losing inverted-T arrow keys :(
Just my opinion, the fact that they had to make a commercial for this at all signifies their need to convince us to buy in on that sort of thing.
They were absolutely nervous about losing sales to larger phones that customers liked. Turns out reaching everything with one thumb isn't really as important as having a big screen to view content on.
We know the rest of the story, the next year the next iPhone became larger...
When it comes to Apple, I believe it was not anticipation, but overreaction to the Galaxy Note. Phablets quickly became popular in East Asia[1], and "pocketability" turned out to be a complete non-issue for the many women who carry around a bag all day. But instead of just serving the phablet market, they've gone all-in on it.
That said, I absolutely agree that companies often converge on weird standards. I'm glad that the glossy screen hype seems to be mostly over, but now we're losing inverted-T arrow keys :(
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/02/phablets-...