Its easy to sneer at the phablet. As a portmanteau term, its kind of unwieldy; as a device, occupying a strange middleground between smartphones and tablets, its difficult to imagine it ever quite catching on.

Worldwide, thats certainly the case, with phablets making up just seven per cent of iOS and Android devices – but not so in South Korea, where that figure rises to an impressive 41 per cent.

Thats according to data from Flurry Analytics, which also found that the devices seem to fill the gap taken up in most markets by tablets, which have just a five per cent market share in South Korea, compared to 19 per cent worldwide.

Part of the reason for this difference could be the dominance of Samsung. South Korea is its home market, and it holds a 60 per cent share of iOS and Android devices used. Another is when the country saw its highest growth: late 2011 and early 2012, during which the Galaxy Note was introduced. In fact, Flurry says, the South Korean connected device market is the first to approach the saturation point – which makes it an early indicator to watch developments in spaces like mobile payments.