Searched this forum for "aria-haspopup" but found no results.

Searching the web, I find many comments similar to:
If you give your menu links (with a drop down) a new attribute, aria-haspopup, and set it’s value to true, IE handles the touch as a hover in the same way as an Apple device does.
eg
Code:
<ul id="hovermenu">
   <li><a href="/news/" aria-haspopup="true">Categories</a>
       <ul>
          <li><a href="/news/top">Gimicks</a></li>
          <li><a href="/news/technology">Technology</a></li>
          <li><a href="/news/sports">Sports</a></li>
       <ul>
   </li>
</ul>
The above markup renders a little menu/list with desired hover effects to show/hide content. Mouse-keyboard users do not notice any difference and hover works as expected. For touch users, the first tap on the DOM element triggers the hover state, until another tap somewhere else or a navigation occurs. The aria-haspopup property conveniently masks the subsequent mouse emulation events to simulate hover on touch-enabled web browsers.
I get the impression that additional js or other device-identifying code is not required for touch devices to emulate :hover in a dropdown menu context.

I am thinking this snippet would be useful for the larger touch devices (eg ipad and surface tablets), but not for mobile phones.

Comments welcome.