The Samsung Foldable Smartphone is Real...

Let's talk about folding smartphones

You've probably heard about this. You might even recall a video from 2014

in which Samsung first teased the idea of a folding smartphone all the way back then

And it's something people have been talking about ever since. And the reason people are interested in the idea of folding smartphones in the first place

is because of the technological advancement that has taken place in displays

allowing them to be flexible. OLED panels that can spin and turn and fold and so on without being busted like a traditional rigid material

Now if you watch the original video in which Samsung showcased the idea

it was shown in a format, a form factor, sort of like a passport or a wallet

It folded in half with an image on the outside, a screen on the outside that you could interact with

and then you could fold it open for a larger image, sort of more tablet-like

It's kind of like having a phone and a tablet at the same time. Now, we have a new development in which the CEO of Samsung has said they're doing it for real

and it's happening this year. Happening in the sense that they're going to announce it, I guess

because he said they're targeting the Samsung Developers Conference in November. That means come November, we may be able to set our eyes on the world's first folding smartphone

Now, granted, there was a folding smartphone previously, but it was a bit different than what we're talking about here

So I made a video a little while ago on the ZTE Axon M

That's sort of more like two phones sandwiched together with a hinge

Here it is. Kind of a cool thing. Messenger on the top display, watch a video on the bottom display, or vice versa

And in the case of this device, it was incredibly low volume

It wasn't super popular. So many people have transitioned to their smartphone as their main computing device and are lying there in bed you know cranked up got looking at it like this typing and so on And so having the extra real estate there for like extended usage scenarios it could be a viable thing or a thing that people are interested in

The biggest player in the smartphone space right now, Samsung says they're going to take it serious

Not like this, but instead a single panel that's capable of folding into itself or away from itself

One screen, no hinge, no break. Now to be clear, in the statement of Samsung's CEO, he said that the device has to be capable of being used in its folded state as well as its unfolded state

So some of the prototypes I've seen floating around in which it shows a clamshell, almost flip-style device, which then folds out to a larger display with no display on the outside

I don't think that's how they're going to go about it, at least based on the language that he's currently using here

Now at this point, you're probably wondering, like, what is the big deal here? Why is there so much focus or hype around the idea of a folding display

Of course, I gave you the reasoning previously that it could be about multitasking

or it could be about having one single device instead of many devices for your computing needs

But I don't honestly think that's what's going on here. I think that there's a technological capability here from Samsung to be able to do this

So they're sort of more in the camp of why not. If we can do this right now and compel people to move on from the current smartphone form factor

we can sell a lot more devices. If we can put something in someone's hand that looks tangibly different from all of the slabs that are out there and in people's pockets

It's become harder and harder to compel people to purchase smartphones around that premium price tag

That price tag that Samsung has lived in for so long with their Galaxy products

Now, speaking of price, the rumor for this potentially folding smartphone is somewhere

between $1,500 and $2,000. So they want the premium sticker They going to have to deliver something significantly different from what happening at the lower end of the market Now the reason for this speculation on my part has to do with sales figures and the fact that many competitors at the lower end of the market have been climbing up the ranks

and getting closer to Samsung in terms of market share companies like Huawei and others

Oppo and so on. The CEO of Samsung also said that they are going to have a greater focus in the upcoming

year on more mid-range competitive devices, devices with a lower sticker price that can

deliver value to compete with all these upstarts, including the phone that's in my pocket right

now from Xiaomi in the form of the Pocophone F1. Now, another area of interest for me with this particular story is the idea that Samsung

is the perfect company to do this. And the reason is, and I'm sure many of you are aware, they're sort of the top dogs in

the OLED display space when it comes to smartphones. Many other manufacturers that they compete with rely on them for the screens that will then go into their smartphones, Apple and others

If we all go out and adopt this bendable display smartphone, now not only as an end product company selling smartphones directly to customers

also as a vendor to other companies, they become more important. Because these panels are very difficult to make, and it's the reason they don't have a ton of competition in the smartphone OLED space

And so many manufacturers have to show up purchasing in volume these screens from them already

This type of technology, if they can bring it to scale and deliver it in an end product

means that they don't only corner the market from a customer perspective

but they also have the potential to corner the market from a vendor perspective, which can have a huge impact on their bottom line

Just imagine this, the bendable, wallet-like, potentially tri-fold smartphone becomes ubiquitous. Everybody wants one

They want Apple to make one, they want Huawei to make one and so on Where do those companies end up Who has the tech that they need It ends up back in Samsung pocket So maybe this is a bit of a bet with a farther or a longer or a bigger forecast

a bigger puzzle in mind where they're like, if we can do this, we must do this. Even if the immediate

use case scenario is not there, even if the volume at the start might not be enough to justify

the investment in R&D. So they can kind of stake their claim

as the leader in that particular technology, OLED panel technology. They're already there right now

It would make sense to go ahead and extend that lead. As a customer, as a guy who uses smartphones

all these prototypes that I've seen of this bending phone, it does seem a little

it doesn't seem bully fleshed out right now. You feel like you may end up with a bigger form factor

You may end up with something fatter with a huge display like that. I mean generally in terms of a tablet you need a huge battery to power it up for any reasonable amount of time

I can see all kinds of potential pitfalls with this type of design

My intuition at this time is pointing in the direction of some strong compromises in exchange to just have this thing fold

So from an end user perspective, I'm having a hard time believing that people are necessarily clamoring for this

But from a vendor perspective, if I'm Samsung, I'm like I gotta put this thing out

We gotta get to the moon first. we got to build some stuff that isn't being built and we have to be the first ones to announce it

and that's what they're aiming for in november keep an eye out the question now goes to you

will you be compelled to purchase a bending smartphone like the one we're speculating is

coming from samsung will you pay somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 to 2000 for something like

that or do you think the fire in this industry is at the lower end of the marketplace with the

devices delivering value under $500, where should Samsung be putting their focus

and are you a future owner of a bending smartphone