The ‘phablet’ is a “killer media-consumption device”, boosting the use of apps in categories such as music, media and entertainment, sports, and news and magazines, according to the latest research from Flurry.

According to the company, phablet use of apps in these categories “dramatically” outstripped overall growth, by as much as 427 per cent in sports. And music, media and entertainment (255 per cent) and news and magazines (172 per cent) saw similar strength from phablets.

The big loser, according to Flurry, is the mobile web. Since the growth of phablets, the total time spent in apps compared to the mobile web picked up an additional 2 percentage points, increasing to 88 per cent of the time spent on mobile in the US compared with 86 per cent in April 2014.

“Our data shows that this shift is predominantly attributed to phablets,” it noted.

“While it may seem, given the name, that phablets are simply the middle ground between a smartphone and a tablet, it is a game-changing form factor,” Simon Khalaf, president and CEO of Flurry, noted in a blog post.