Turns out there are an awful lot of phablet fans out there. More than three million, in fact, have lined up to cram Samsung’s latest smartphone-cum-tablet, the Galaxy Note II , in their oversized pockets . It took 37 days for the device to pass three million sales. The Korean mobile maker originally confirmed these figures to AP , and has also now confirmed them to TechCrunch. The Note II was released initially in South Korea in September, with sales to other markets — including the U.S. and the U.K. — kicking off in October.
The three million figure is a 3x ramping up of early sales of the original Galaxy Note, which shipped around one million units in its first month of sale (albeit, this was prior to its U.S. launch) — underlining how Samsung has not only pioneered the phablet category, but succeeded in building serious momentum for enormo-phones. For some context, Apple sold more than five million of its latest iPhone 5 in its first weekend of sales. The iPhone 5’s screen size is not in the phablet category but is slightly larger than previous iPhones — 4 inches vs. 3.5 inches — a sign of the big pull Samsung’s big phones are having on the smartphone market. Yesterday, Apple kicked off sales of its new smaller form factor tablet, the iPad Mini — a device that in no small part also owes its existence to Samsung’s Note devices, being both a counter strategy to mini tablets such as the Google Nexus but also enormo-phones like the Note.
