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.
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