Time.news – There are still few of them around, but folding smartphones fare better than traditional ones, at least looking at the numbers.
If the trend figure for the sector is in sharp decline, the ‘foldable’ portion is growing. Of course we are talking about only 1.1% of the total (International Data Corporation – Idc data), but shipments worldwide will reach 13.5 million units in 2022, with an increase of 66.6% compared to 8 , 1 million in 2021. The forecast is that in 2026 there will be three times as much – about 41.5 million – with an annual growth rate of almost 70% year on year.
He Samsung Flip 4
At Samsung, the largest manufacturer of leaflets, they are convinced that the foldable format “is here to stay” and further proof are more and more manufacturers who try their hand at it. Archived – at least on the Western market – the challenge between the Korean Samsung and the Chinese Huawei, players such as Honor and Motorola remain in the field in Europe.
The Chinese company will present its leaflet at home on November 22 and President George Zhao announced in September that the company’s European strategy will be to have two flagships, including a leaflet.
Motorola, on your part, ha just presented the new Razra flip-phone that, when closed, has a 2.7-inch interactive display with which they can read, view notifications and send messages, take photos, make payments and, when open, has a 6.72-inch P-OLED display with refresh rate up to 144 Hz with split screen functionality to work on with multiple open apps.
Il Samsung Fold 4
The protagonist of the market is still Samsung, the first house to present a flip and a fold (the first folds, halving the size of a normal ‘candy bar’ smartphone and the second opens longitudinally, doubling the size of the display). With Nicolò Bellorini, head of business of the mobile eXperience division, we talked about the state of the folding smartphone market and its prospects.
After 4 years what is the market reaction to folding smartphones?
It is a type of device that has come to stay and is destined for exponential growth, a trend that is already active. It is certainly an innovation that the market appreciates and that it was probably also waiting for. Perhaps the industry needed something that was not only marginally innovative and that revolutionized the use of the smartphone.
A sector in which competition with other producers remains close …
I know that the competition also has similar devices, but we are in the fourth generation. It is an extremely complex technology and it is not as easy to reach the market and create a customer base as we have done. It’s a long and very complex process: ads and prototypes are one thing, another is having solid technology to put in the hands of the consumer.
Don’t leaflets risk cannibalizing the talblet market?
The tablet market after the pandemic has lived a second life due to smart working and e-learning and has made users discover the benefit of having a large screen with great computing capacity to which eventually attach a mouse, a screen and a keyboard to use it as a pc. All features that, perhaps also due to the industry, had not previously been clearly understood. We have treasured this and today we have a line of tablets developed in this logic. You don’t hear much about tablets, but it’s a product that still sells a lot today. In the fold, the integration between smartphone and tablet is direct: a tool that combines a large screen with a large calculation capacity.
Is the future of the foldable Flip or Fold?
Flexible screen technology gives you the opportunity to double your normal screen or halve its footprint. And in these years in which we have offered these products we have seen that the two form factors almost completely cover the needs of user experience well. The flip is a balanced feminine / masculine product and is perceived as younger, while the fold is more masculine. They will both go forward: whoever tries the foldable does not go back. It would not make sense to say that the whole world of smartphones in the future will be foldable, but those looking for a form factor of this type are unlikely to return to that candy bar: these are ridiculous percentages.
Who is the typical user of both models?
If it is true that there is someone who uses it extremely dedicated to productivity, it is equally true that that person, at another time of the day, will use it for entertainment. There is no exclusive use: all professionals also have a private life. The strength of the foldable is precisely this: it guarantees many more functions without the need to separate private life from professional life. There is no real reason why the two functions need to be on two different devices.
Why should you buy a leaflet: beyond the visual appeal, what are the real advantages for those who have to work on it?
If you need to use applications, read excel or word files and even update them, edit them, etc. it is evident that on a large screen this is much easier. Furthermore, partnerships with major software houses make integrations with applications much easier than on a candybar format. I can make a video call and use a spreadsheet in the meantime. The taskbar helps to switch between apps, you can split multitasking and even copy and paste by dragging from one to another.
Foldables are very expensive: in any case over a thousand euros. Will they ever go down in price?
Their perceived value will increase, then the price will be a question of supply and demand. We are in the business of developing consumer technology and technology is expensive.
At the Ifa in Berlin, Samsung has shown that it continues at full steam on the path of the IoT and the integration between mobile and appliances. Is it possible to imagine the folding as a hub for the connected home as well as a work and entertainment tool?
The family hub is a concept linked to sharing within the family. The interaction between white and mobile allows appliances to go beyond their functional purpose and use technology for communications that serve the whole family, but the smartphone tends to be an individual and personal device and will remain so.