iPhone 6 And 6 Plus: iPhablets Might Kill The iPad

After making an incremental screen size increase to four inches with the iPhone 5 in 2012, Apple finally succumbed to consumers’ demands for a large-screen iOS-based smartphone and released the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus in 2014. With the screen size of the iPhone 6 Plus only 2.4 inches smaller than the iPad mini, some industry watchers began to wonder if the latest iPhone models might start to cannibalize the sales of the iPad by making the tablet’s larger screen size redundant for new iPhone owners.

In a related report by the Inquisitr, it is rumored that Apple is going to kill off the iPad mini 3 after just one year and there has been in increase in the iPad Air Plus or the iPad Pro specs being leaked.

These changes in the line of devices by Apple could be due to the expected change in usage of Apple’s devices. In the past Apple hasn’t ever really been that afraid of cannibalizing sales of its own products, so long as customers are still buying hardware from Apple and entering its ecosystem. We knew that back when Apple first introduced the iPad and folks were worried it would cannibalize sales of Macs. Now it seems that folks are picking up iPhones over the iPad.

A recent study of users choice between using their iPhone 6 or 6 Plus or their iPad shows that iPads are being used less by owners of one of the new iPhone 6 phones.

A comparison between iPhone and iPad usage will be a great factor in the latter’s salability and survival, according to Business Insider. A consumer who owns both the iPad and iPhone 6 now only spends 28 percent of his time reading and watching using the tablet. But worst of all, when an iPad user gets hold of the iPhone 6 Plus, the owner has the tendency to spend only 20 percent of his time on the iPad, according to the study by Pocket. If such trends continue then Apple might not sell as many iPads as it used to.

In the world before iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, an owner of both an iPhone and iPad would on average almost split their media consumption between the two. In this new world, the functionality of the new iPhones takes over that of the iPad and will cannibalize its sales in the same way that the sale and usage of the iPod were cannibalized. Apple iPod’s digital media playing functions were taken over by the iPhone’s capabilities, and consumers saw less reason to own a separate device.

This could be a major thought behind the larger tablet footprint specs leaked on the iPad Air Plus. The new tablet possibly will sport a screen of 12.2 inches, even possibly up to that of 12.9 inches. The larger size would help keep the iPad line going by increasing the gap between it and the growing size of phones and overlapping functionality.

“That being said, there remains one place where tablets still reign: your nightstand. Regardless of which iPhone they have, users still reach for their iPads around 9pm for some late-night, bedtime reading,” summarized Pocket on its study.

Do you think the iPad will go the way of the iPod?