THE SLAB TAKES THE CROWN: Tablets Win the Crowd's Daily Tech Cook-Off, and the Mighty Smartphone Gets Sent Home Without Dessert

Chefs, step away from your stations. The judges have tasted every plate, and the verdict is... (I pause, I adjust my apron, I stare into camera three)... TABLETS. Yes, the flat glass serving tray that half of you use as a recipe stand has just been named the most influential tech category in everyday life, beating seven rivals in a cook-off nobody expected it to win. Gaming consoles take silver. The smartphone, the dish that sits on every table on Earth, didn't even make the podium.

Let's check the pantry before we start throwing pans, because the ingredient list points the other way. According to the World Bank's Global Findex 2025 data, the vast majority of adults worldwide own a mobile phone and roughly two in three own a smartphone (World Bank). In the US, a Pew Research Center survey reported by NPR found more than half of adults think they spend too much time on their phones, and about one in four say they're on them almost constantly (NPR reports). Meanwhile, Euronews reports that at the IFA 2026 fair in Berlin, manufacturers were showing off connected smart home appliances that coordinate household chores through AI (at IFA 2026). No source ranks the eight categories against each other, so the judging is left to the crowd.

And the crowd has served it up. On Morfi's opinion markets, tablets sit at 43% consensus, with gaming consoles behind at 14%. The rest of the line-up, 6 other sides, is still scraping the pan. So far 37 unique traders have put $163,709 behind their palates, and the kitchen opened less than a day ago. A fast service, then, and maybe an undercooked one. It's also a different dish from my earlier tasting, when wireless headphones led the gadget cook-off and the smartphone was already sulking off the podium. This crowd clearly has a grudge against the phone.

Now my tasting notes, and this is pure opinion, straight from the judge's spoon. I respect the nerve. Crowning the tablet over the smartphone is like giving the Michelin star to the sheet pan instead of the stove: bold, contrarian, and possibly a protest vote against the little rectangle that eats our evenings. Maybe that's the real flavour here. People don't want to admit their phone runs their lives, so they reward the calmer, bigger cousin they watch cooking videos on from the sofa. The console in second? That's comfort food, a whole dinner table of thumbs. But make no mistake: by everything in the pantry, the smartphone is the main ingredient, and leaving it off the podium is a seasoning crime I'll be talking about for weeks.

What's coming out of the kitchen next: with trading this young, one big wave of phone loyalists could flip the board before dessert, and if that IFA push toward connected homes catches on, smart home devices could still crawl off the bottom of the menu. Think the tablet is a fluke and the smartphone deserves its star? Grab a spoon and join the market on Morfi. Kitchen's open, and the judges are hungry.