Column: Stop laughing at the phablet -- Samsung was right

As unlikely as it may seem, this is shaping up as a contest between Samsung) and Microsoft, if only because Apple didn’t think it was a race worth running.

Just when it looked as if consumer demand for smartphones was moving into the dreaded “mature” stage of slower sales, a bright spot has appeared on the horizon, and it’s a big one: at least five and a half inches diagonally, sometimes close to seven inches.

It’s the phablet -- the jumbo-sized hybrid of smartphone and tablet that looked funny to a lot of people when they first saw it -- and it is, at least for the moment, the device that is projected to grow fastest in the global smart phone market.

It turns out that a lot of people, especially people in Asia, would rather buy a single device than buy or tote two of them.