Phablets, smartphones with a screen size between 5.1 inches and 6.9 inches, accounted for 21 percent of all smartphone sales in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2015, according to a report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech released Wednesday. Compared to the first quarter of 2014, phablets’ share of the smartphone market nearly quadrupled from the 6 percent it claimed a year ago.

Phablet buyers prefer bigger screen size

Apple’s 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus accounted for 44 percent of sales in the phablet segment, noted the report. The main reason for buying a phablet smartphone was screen size for 43 percent of iOS buyers and 47 percent of Android buyers.

Apple’s iPhone proved most popular among customers of AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Corp., where the iPhone accounted for 59 percent, 43 percent and 50 percent of overall smartphone sales. Samsung, in turn, ruled at T-Mobile, where its Android handsets accounted for 42 percent of all smartphone sales.

Of iOS’s new U.S. customers for the first quarter of 2015, 11.4 percent made the switch from Android, down from 14.6 percent who jumped ship during the first quarter of 2014. Among new Android customers, only 5.9 percent switched from iOS, compared to 9.8 percent in the first quarter of 2014.

In Europe, the rate of Android users switching to iOS is significantly higher. Across Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, 32.4 percent of customers who bought an iPhone for the first time during the first quarter of this year switched to iOS from Android handsets.

Even though fewer customers switched from iOS to Android in the U.S., Google’s mobile operating system still claimed 58.1 percent of the U.S. smartphone market for the first quarter – a 0.2 percentage point gain over its first quarter share in 2014, noted the report.

Across the U.S., 18 percent of all iPhones in use are either the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus model and a further 64 percent is made up of the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c.

photo credit: iPhone 6 Plus via photopin (license)