We can’t abide phablets. Not the devices themselves – with voice calls easily handled using headphones or headsets, the idea of smartphones with five or even six-inch screens clearly makes sense for a growing number of people. It’s the name: ‘phablets’. Awful. The campaign to rebrand these devices as ‘bigphones’ starts (and probably ends) here. Still, some serious stats on the demand for these devices have been published by analyst IHS iSuppli, claiming that ph**let shipments will reach 60.4m units in 2013, rising to 146m by 2016. Meanwhile, the success of Apple’s iPad mini, Google’s Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire is seeing the tablet market nudge downwards towards smaller seven-inch screens (Smablets? No.) making for an intriguing convergence in the year ahead.
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Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…