For all the bubblicious hype about the relative utility of smartphones and tablets in the enterprise, technology managers perhaps shouldn’t worry so much about the difference between the two.  As Apple prepares to release its “mini” 7-inch version of the iPad tablet later this month — downsizing from 9.5 inches to compete with the smaller-screen Amazon Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7 tablets — the smartphone market appears to be geared toward bigger devices: Apple’s just-released iPhone 5 was lauded for its larger 4.5-inch screen, and the Samsung Note II — the so-called “phablet” — will have a 5.5-inch screen when it’s released in the U.S.
 
That’s not all: Japanese manufacturers are supposedly joining together to build super-high-end 5-inch screens for use in smartphones, leading CNET to speculate: “If one thing seems certain, next year should play out as the year when most high-end smartphones feature a 5-inch screen.”
 
So the functional difference between smartphones and tablets appears to be shrinking. Will they eventually merge so that we just have “smartlets” or “tabphones”? As one commenter noted on an post about the iPad Mini on All Things D: “How will larger phones effect sales of smaller tablets? … Will [smaller] tablets sell, when more and more phones are breaking the 5+ inch barrier? Last year I might have gotten a 7-inch tablet, but with the Galaxy Note’s 5.5-inch display, I’m looking at one of those to be my ‘tablet on the go’ device.”

How should mobility managers best deal with phone/tablet convergence?  Test-trial a variety of devices as they evolve, or find economies of scale with a single, more proven platform?
 
Read it Here: In 2013, We’ll Be Singing About 5-Inch Smartphone Screens | CNET
 
More: No PC, Laptop, or Phone: How One Exec Does It All on a ‘Phablet’.