Why would a 3.5'' phone be out of place, today? I see people everywhere assuming this is right, that increasing the screen size was truly needed (and demanded), but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I mean, I'm sure that there's evidence that people wanted bigger screens (if Apple did it...), but I can't seem to find it, except for interweb-people who blog about... stuff. :) Real people - do they want bigger screens? For them, is the 3.5'' phone really out of place?
Anyway: I guess I can be considered a interweb-person, tech savvy, heavy user*, and all that jazz. Still, I'm proudly driving my 4s. Even the 5/5s/5c is too big for me; I can't comfortably reach the top corners of the screens. I do believe that habits may have changed, but our anthropometry certainly didn't - the average human thumb is still the same length.
What I wanted to know is roughly how much are the bigger smartphones being sold, against the regular-sized ones. The most recent Apple smartphones are big, both, while the "regular-sized" ones are from last year or before. Does the data supports this decision - "forgetting" about the "regular-size" and launching only bigger ones?
Can't put my hands on the exact article and corresponding chart, but from memory the segment has grown from around 4-5% area to closer to 10%. Again not exact numbers, but until I find the post that's all I got.
Consumers have had both "regular" and "large" phones to choose from and they're choosing larger and larger displays.
These are not the posts I'm specifically remembering, but do have helpful insight:
http://www.businessinsider.com/there-will-be-four-times-more...
http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/third-smart-phones-shipped-q...
I'm sorry, but I can't read that from the data you shared. "They"'re not choosing larger and larger displays - it was an untapped market, so people willing to buy bigger smartphones are doing it, as they become available. We can't assume that everyone/most/many will follow this trend and we also don't know when it will stop growing. Also it seems natural that buying trends will, up to a point, follow marketing trends - if almost all automakers start selling only big cars, then people would choose "larger and larger" cars.
The reason you're looking for is that these aren't phones any longer. Pulling numbers out of my ass here, but I bet the vast majority of smart phone users spend less of a hundredth of total smart phone usage actually talking on the thing. They're media consumption devices, just like your TV. And just like TVs, people like having larger screens so they can see more content, easier. Obviously, there is an equilibrium of size to convenience that will eventually be reached.