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Comment by hereonbusiness | Hacker News Reader

> In fact, a higher proportion of low-income Americans rely on their smartphone for Internet access than the population as a whole. A 2013 Pew research survey showed that 45% of users living in households with an annual income of less than $30,000 mostly use their phone to go online, compared with 27% of those living in households with an annual income of $75,000 or more.

If the situation is similar in the rest of the world, could this then be the driving force behind the trend of ever increasing screen size (phablets)?

I mean, if a smartphone was my only means of accessing the internet you can bet I would want it to have a big screen.

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27% is still a lot, and those would be the ones who could afford phablets.

I would guess that a lot of the people in the demographic we're speaking about make do with previous generation smartphones or the lower end ones you get with a contract, so smaller screen sizes are probably more common, as are older Android versions.

So one better uses features that the 2.3 Android browser understands.

I'm more surprised that feature phones don't play a larger role, but I guess this would be different outside of the US, in developing markets.

>those would be the ones who could afford phablets

Poor people are usually not that good at managing their money. That's the reason why phone companies subsidizes the phones, not because they are nice, but because they know they can take advantage of the situation. A low earning person will rarely shell out a lump sum of $600 to buy a phone. Instead, if you offer her the option to buy it in 24 easy $30 payments she'll go for it.

Some poor people are insolvent, most poor people have liquidity constraints. So my intuition is that the target of expensive phones are poor and rich people alike.

Probably, in the long term, until the larger screens trickle down into the cheaper phones. In the short term, the more astute poor people are buying the $30 4" Android phones and just buying minutes when they can, leaching wi-fi otherwise (at least, this is what my 21 year old daughter does). The current cheap phones have relatively small screens, but at least they are bigger than the faux blackberry type Android phones of 2 or 3 years ago.

> If the situation is similar in the rest of the world, could this then be the driving force behind the trend of ever increasing screen size (phablets)?

I don't think it's a trend that needs explaining - it just makes sense. I'm baffled by how long it took us to get to the 6" form factor.

Now I imagine a brainstorming session at Apple a couple of years ago;

Jobs: Ok, we are going clockwise, start.

Engineer1: We should use a 5" screen in the new iPhone 5, Samsung will go 5", and it even has a 5 in the name.

Jobs: Why the hell should we do that, just because Samsung is doing it?

Engineer1: To improve user experience for using the internet and watching media content?

Jobs: I don't see where you are coming from, why wouldn't they just use their iPad or MacBook for that?

Jobs: Next!

Engineer1: But, but ... some of them don't ...

Jobs: I said next.

Engineer1: Ah, nevermind.

Cost? As touch screen manufacturing prices came down, the screens have gradually gotten bigger. Larger screens have lower yields due to "defects per square inch" until later generations perfect (and cheapen) the process.

Only now are we starting to get to the "barely fit into pocket" size, which marks the end game for phones.

I saw a pretty ridiculous "tablet" at MalWart the other day, though. 20-something inches (and thick). Ow, my arms!

My sample is small but here in Kenya where most people access the internet through their phones, very few complain about "big" phones.

I have never looked at it from the income perspective though.

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