The iPhone 6 Plus is crushing tablet sales

Apple's New Big-Screen iPhones Draw Long Lines As Sales Start

Customers compare an Apple Inc. iPhone 6, left, and iPhone 6 plus during the sales launch at an Apple store in Palo Alto, California, U.S., on Friday, Sept. 19, 2014. Apple Inc.'s stores attracted long lines of shoppers for the debut of the latest iPhones, indicating healthy demand for the bigger-screen smartphones. The larger iPhone 6 Plus is already selling out at some stores across the U.S. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Photograph by David Paul Morris — Bloomberg/Getty Images

In an earnings conference call Tuesday, Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly told analysts that tablet sales have fallen 30% across the industry, The Financial Post reported. He said that Best Buy saw its own tablet sales fall as well, though by a margin less than 30%.

Why aren’t people buying tablets anymore? Extra-large phones like the iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung’s Galaxy Note are big enough to serve as both phone and tablet. That reality is especially hurting sales of smaller tablets like the iPad Mini. Apple introduced a new version of the iPad Mini in October of last year to little fanfare.

Tablet sales grew only 11% in 2014, according to research firm Gartner, down from 55% growth the year before. Gartner projected 229 million tablets were sold in 2014.

Tablets first burst onto the mainstream consumer electronics scene in 2010 when Apple released the iPad.