Foldables will be the talking point in terms of consumer electronics this year thanks to the interest they had last year and Samsung wants to strengthen its foundation as an industry leader in this space.
There are new rumours that the South Korean giant is looking to make an affordable foldable in the form of the Galaxy Z Fold6 scheduled to launch later this year.
This is not surprising as news of Samsung considering making Fan Editions of their foldable smartphones had started gaining traction from early last year. It was expected that we might see a Galaxy Z Flip6 FE and Z Fold6 FE a few months after the launch of the official Galaxy Z Flip6 and Z Fold6.
News coming from South Korea points out that Samsung will focus on the bookstyle foldable for now with an affordable price tag next to it thanks to how competitive the foldable market in China is. In China alone where there are multiple foldable options, Samsung ranks third after OPPO and Huawei who lead the table and this move makes sense.
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Locally, the market is still young with only two other companies offering their foldable options – TECNO and OPPO with their Phantom V Fold and Phantom V Flip and Find N2 Flip respectively.
TECNO is slated to launch the Phantom V2 Fold a few months from now with an expected announcement at MWC 2024 while OPPO is planning to bring either the Find N3 Flip or the Find N3 to the country.
I was lucky enough to check out both of them(Find N3 series) and Samsung should be worried the new Find N3 series will be their biggest competitor in the country if they eventually launch in the country.
Last year, Roh Tae-Moon, Samsung Electronics president projected that global demand for foldable smartphones would reach 10 million units in five years. That number is huge if you consider that only 15.8 million foldable units were shipped by December 2023( a 23% increase from 2022) and them making a low-end foldable would probably increase those numbers.
The publication adds that switching the focus to the Fold6 instead of the Flip6 is that the clamshell-style foldable is already established and that Samsung sells more Flip units compared to Fold units. The Flip5 led the foldable numbers in terms of models with the Fold5 coming in second and the Flip4 coming in third while Honor Magic V2 and Huawei Mate X5 closing the roundup.
It’ll be interesting to see how all this plays out this year.
