Innovative designs utilizing foldable displays are slowly making their way into the marketplace. … [+]
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In June of 2018, when I attended the annual Society of Information Display Conference (SID) in Los Angeles, I saw prototypes of foldable displays from BOE, a Chinese display manufacturer. I got to play with a prototype folding phone back then that used their flexible display and wrote that the era of foldable smartphones was on the horizon.
The SID conference is an exciting one and is taking place this week in a virtual format. While it is one of the more technically-based conferences, its focus on displays of all types is very interesting to me and many in the tech industry.
I was very impressed with the conceptual idea of a folding phone, and since then, Samsung has brought a version to market that had a bumpy start but they have been refining this foldable phone design and is making it much better.
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Most of the foldable phones designed are created to fold in half from the vertical center out. When unfolded, the idea behind this is that the screen goes from a single 6-inch screen to one that, when opened, can have a screen that diagonally reaches up to 10 inches, thus creating a kind of mini-tablet.
Motorola has shown the other folding smartphone design, its revamped Razr and it folds in half, from top to bottom.
While this Motorola design does not add a larger screen surface that is possible in a smartphone that folds out from the center, it allows for a bigger screen, and when folded in half, it is a smaller form factor that is easier to carry around. Samsung has previewed a similar product called the Galaxy Z Flip.
Soon Microsoft will release their Surface Duo handheld, which straddles the line of a small tablet and a large smartphone.
While these new foldable devices are an engineering marvel, there is one big question about folding smartphones that have not been addressed yet. Is there an actual market or business case for folding smartphones? If there is, will there be any real demand by mainstream mobile phone users?
The more I study foldable smartphones, the more I conclude that these will never be mainstream devices and will probably represent less than 8%-10% of all smartphones shipped in the future, at best. Cost is the most prohibitive factor today since these carry premium prices anywhere from $1400-1900. While prices could come down over time, the critical component in a folding smartphone is the display itself, and it will remain a premium cost for some time.
In talking with two folding display vendors recently, I learned that it is unlikely they will make the kind of investments needed to expand their foldable display manufacturing lines. Given the demand for more mainstream displays, especially OLED displays that are in high demand and very profitable, it is there they are making the most investments.
BOE, who showed me their first foldable display in mid-2018, landed a lucrative contract with Apple late last year to work on OLED screens. The display vendors tell me that the initial demand in displays will be for OLED in premium phones, and then as they ramp up their manufacturing lines to create them in greater numbers, we will see OLED displays in even mid-range smartphones as early as mid 2021.
I love the ingenuity and technical designs of a foldable smartphone, but I am just not convinced that they will ever garner real demand by mainstream users. Most likely, they will remain a product that attracts early adopters, some verticals and very few mainstream users.
The other folding display form factor in the works are folding laptops. In May of 2019, Lenovo introduced its first foldable in their Thinkpad X1 line of notebooks in prototype form. I got to spend some hands-on time with it at CES in January, 2020. The X1 Foldable was still a prototype, but it was designed by Lenovo’s stellar Yamoto, Japan labs, which created the solid Thinkpad line of laptops.
To view how the Lenovo X1 foldable works, check out this video from The Verge.
The keyboard on this foldable PC is external, so to use it, you would stand the unfolded laptop up and place the Bluetooth keyboard in front of it. Surprisingly, this works well and is not at all an odd configuration.
In the folded mode, it feels like a book. Unfold it, and it is a large tablet/laptop.
The more I got to play with it, the more I began to realize that this design for portable computing could be a game-changer, at least in terms of new and innovative mobile computing platforms.
At first, it will be far too expensive for the mass market and instead will find its way into vertical markets where I suspect it will get serious interest. Over time, if the prices come down, it could find a niche market with road warriors and executives who want the ultimate portability and will be willing to pay the premium rates for this type of mobile computing experience.
The cost of the foldable display is close to triple the price of a traditional screen in a laptop. Making them in large volumes is not really in the cards for these specialty display manufacturers, at least in the near future.
I have tracked laptops since they entered into the market in 1985 and have a good feel for these product design and functionality. This new Lenovo foldable and two others that will be introduced later this year or early next year represent a big step in portable computing.
While I believe that foldable laptops might fair better than foldable smartphones, at best, I see neither of these new foldable products being more than 8%-10% of their respective markets by 2023.
The post Is There A Market For Foldable Smartphones And Laptops? – Forbes appeared first on abangtech.
source https://abangtech.com/is-there-a-market-for-foldable-smartphones-and-laptops-forbes/
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