Samsung is anticipated to roll out its first-ever foldable Galaxy smartphone in the free half of 2019 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Galaxy smartphones. It has since conducted a number of tests including a recent durability test where the device was found ‘unbreakable’ after it was tried to fold for more than 20,000 times without any scratch or glitch. On the contrary, a recent report published by Nikkei states that Huawei, the China-based smartphone manufacturer is planning to roll out a foldable smartphone ahead of Samsung’s launch next year. In fact, Huawei is estimated to roll out the cool and first-ever foldable smartphone as early as the end of this year.
Huawei has joined hands with panel maker BOE dubbed as Beijing Oriental Electronics or how its employees know it as ‘Best In World’ in order to supply flexible OLED displays that will be mounted on upcoming ‘foldable’ Huawei smartphone. On the other hand, BOE has already showcased its prowess over a slew of foldable, flexible, as well as thin paper-like OLED displays at an event which has truly garnered attention from a lot of enthusiasts as well as smartphone manufacturers such as Apple.
Huawei is determined to follow a hyper-accelerated development cycle that it followed a number of times to reveal headline-grabbing technologies ahead of its competitors. One of the biggest examples is its Huawei Ascend P7 Sapphire that was released in 2014 soon after Apple was rumored to include a sapphire crystal display in its line of iPhones, however, Apple dropped the idea. Similarly, in 2015, Huawei launched its Huawei Mate S thereby leaving behind Apple in its ‘Force Touch’ technology which again was scrapped from Apple’s end. It has recently revealed the first-ever triple-camera setup smartphone Huawei P20 Pro ahead of other smartphone manufacturers.
Samsung is planning to unveil the 7.3-inch foldable OLED smartphone in the first half of 2019 at a price tag between $1,500 to $2,000. Samsung has quoted that it will produce over two to three units of this first generation foldable smartphone, however, analyst quote that only one million of the units can be sold overall. On the other hand, Huawei and BOE have kept profitability at the least priority since Huawei’s priority is to introduce the first-ever foldable phone in the market which will be limited to 20,000 to 30,000 units.
BOE’s priority is to scale up the ladder in the panel maker industry by showing its advanced displays at a nail-biting price that could bring down the manufacturing cost of U.S. giant Apple. Samsung Displays currently dominates the panel making industry with over 200 million OLED displays that are estimated to be produced this year compared to five millions of BOE and LG Display each.
Huawei is also the third-largest smartphone manufacturer with over 10.4% of market share trailing behind Apple and Samsung. In fact, its phenomenal growth even in a highly saturated and competitive market could make it the second largest manufacturer ahead of Apple by the end of 2018 with over more than 200 million units sold this year.
Another ‘first’ in the Huawei’s bucket is its AI core processor Kirin 970 that was introduced ahead of Apple’s iPhone 8 and iPhone X launch which sports Apple’s A11 bionic chip. Now that only a few months are left before 2018 would end, it would be exciting to see any further information related to Huawei’ foldable smartphone and citing the trend followed by Huawei for years, it might introduce a foldable phone ahead of Samsung which is highly likely.
