Phone Calls on Tablets? An Unlikely Feature Becomes Popular in Asia

I know our phones are getting bigger, but some folks in Asia are taking it to an extreme. Vendors are starting to pump out more 7-inch tablets capable of voice call functions after a report shows the feature is popular.

Research firm IDC, says electronic vendors shipped 13.8 million tablets to the Asia-Pacific region in the second quarter. Of the nearly 14 million, 25% of them were designed for voice calls over a cell network. That's a jump of 10 percentage points from the previous quarter. The numbers above do exclude Japan.

Tablets capable of voice calls have exploded in several Asia/Pacific countries including Thailand, Indonesia, India and Malaysia according to IDC. Why the sudden jump in tablets with voice call capabilities? It looks like it comes down to money. People in these areas don't have the budgets of people living in the West, and want one gadget to rule them all.

Vendors big and small have rushed to include voice calls on tablets. Big companies such as Samsung and Asus to local companies such as India's Micromax and Indonesia's Advan Digital are including the feature.

While the exact number of users using voice calls on their tablets isn't known, it is big enough for companies to market the feature in advertisements.

If the trend of bigger smartphones continues, we'll all be making phone calls on 7-inch devices soon.