There was an initial conundrum with folding phones: Will they achieve comparable success to large-screen phones like the Galaxy Note? Or would they be a fiasco like curved TVs? These Samsung bets are up on a coin flip. Folding cell phones are singing for now: They need more time to establish themselves as an important person in the industry… or to stay in a doubt without getting much attention.

Three years after the first arrived, Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Honor, Motorola, Vivo, and Oppo are already promoted by this format at one point. Related brands like OnePlus or Realme (Oppo and Vivo share ownership with BBK), Google or Apple continue to draw their own profiles when it comes to folding. Users of the first three have alternatives without leaving their operating system. Apple doesn’t.

slow consolidation

In 2019, the first year foldables hit the market, four models were launched. five in 2020. seven in 2021; and in the eight months we are in 2022, five, again with Samsung in the lead role.

It’s a pretty slow evolution, considering the number of mobile phones announced each year. Between 450 and 600 in recent years. About 1% of mobile phones announced each year can be folded. Let’s see the evolution of folding launches by overlapping conventional terminals in another way.

Since Android users can choose the folding options, iOS users cannot. Three summers ago, rumors started that Samsung was offering to provide this type of panel to Apple. The same rumors that came a year later.

Ming Chi Kuo, the top leaker about Apple with his resources in the production chain and one of the top success percentages in his guild, noted: 2025 will be the year Apple launches its first folding operationThe earliest and such could be an iPhone or a hybrid iPhone-iPad approach device.

Apple is characterized, among other things, because he is conservative in his bets: he opens himself up to new ranges only when he can place a full bet. So yes, it goes with everything. Apple Watch, AirPods… Samsung is on the opposite end of the spectrum, accustomed to risking and launching prototypes that are market-approved or not. Its direction as a supplier of components to other manufacturers also has an impact there, a business where it generates much more profit than selling consumer electronics.

maybe this dichotomy explains Apple’s delay in betting this marketThese tend to age much worse than conventional panels, especially since it fixed problems with the hinges of the early models, considering that the condition of a folding screen’s screen after a period of use is still a risk.

Time will tell if this is the only hurdle left for Apple to dare launch its folding proposal, which has been strictly tested in Apple Park labs for some time. Foldable products provide inherent benefits such as large pocket-sized screens. Being able to watch videos, use maps or read books in such a format from anywhere is not bad.

In any case, it wouldn’t be bad to see what Apple’s approach to the folding terminal is. It is Apple that has set the physical standards of mobile phones, the main focus of smart watches, the design of ultraportables or the principle of wireless audio headphones in the last fifteen years. We’ll have to keep waiting.