SAN FRANCISCO: Samsung on Wednesday is expected to unveil new flagship smartphones including one with a screen that can fold closed like a book as it seeks to boost the moribund market.
Much of what is in store at a Galaxy Unpacked event that the South Korean consumer electronics giant is hosting in San Francisco has been revealed in leaks, including a Galaxy 10 television commercial accidentally aired.
New Galaxy models will mark the tenth-anniversary of the line, and Samsung is to show off wireless ear buds.
However, the spotlight is likely to be commandeered by a handset with a bendable screen that would allow it to fold from tablet-sized to a smartphone form.
The innovation would be arriving on a global smartphone scene that has cooled as the devices become ubiquitous and buyers put off upgrading from models they own.
“The industry is in flat to declines and we’ve reached a saturation point of smartphones,” said Moor Insights and Strategy principal analyst Patrick Moorhead.
“What Samsung needs to do, no different from Apple, is give people a reason to get rid of a phone that might be perfectly fine for something different.”
The argument for a phone that can fold open to provide a larger screen is an easy one – buyers have shown a preference for “more real estate” to watch videos, play games, work, and more.
Samsung was mocked when it introduced large-screen Note phones, only to wind up
giving rise to a “phablet” trend that rivals followed.
“I am expecting there to be trade-offs,” Moorhead said of a Samsung foldable phone.
“You can’t take leading-edge technology and fold it, and have it not be thicker.”
Along with perhaps being a bit clunky, a folding phone could come with a lofty price of US $1,500 or so, but the point for Samsung is not to sell truckloads of the handsets but to establish a new category to kindle demand in a global market devoid of growth, according to the analyst.
“Samsung always does better when they have something that Apple doesn’t have that is valuable to consumers,” Moorhead said.
“This is Samsung’s opportunity to take some premium market share from Apple.”
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