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Foldable Smartphones Expected to Reach 11m in 2021
Global shipments of foldable handsets are from 5m to about 11m units, according to Sigmaintell Consulting, a Beijing-based market research firm.
About 9 units will come from Samsung Electronics and around 2 million will come mainly from Chinese manufacturers, said Chen Jun, vice-president and chief analyst of Sigmaintell. The research firm also said shipments of 5G-enabled smartphones in China are expected to rise 70 percent to 260 million units this year, with a penetration rate of 74 percent. "The worldwide foldable smartphone shipments are set to witness rapid growth in the next few years, and the figure will reach 74 million units in 2025 from nearly 4 million in 2020," Chen said. Foldable phone prices will likely drop to less than 10,000 yuan ($1,546) each this year, as Chinese OEM’s OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi and possibly Google launch a foldable phone this year.
Sigmaintell forecasts global shipments of 5G smartphones to surge to 550 million units this year from 230 million units in 2020.
According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, 163 million 5G phones were shipped in China last year, and 218 new 5G models were rolled out.
OLED, panels used in smartphones reached 83 million units in the Chinese market last year, Chen said. He predicted shipments will reach 100 million units in 2021, with flexible OLED panels accounting for 70 percent of all types of OLED panels. "Chinese players led by Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi have now adopted OLED panels in their mid-tier portfolios ($300-$500) to differentiate their products. This is one of the key reasons for the growth of AMOLED smartphones," wrote Jene Park, a senior research analyst at Counterpoint Research, in a research note.
Sigmaintell says, "The penetration rate of OLED panels in smartphones will rise to 40 percent this year." BOE Technology Group Co Ltd, Visionox Technology Inc and China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co Ltd are banking on the flexible screens mainly used in smartphones.
Figure 1: Samsung Note
Global shipments of foldable handsets are from 5m to about 11m units, according to Sigmaintell Consulting, a Beijing-based market research firm.
About 9 units will come from Samsung Electronics and around 2 million will come mainly from Chinese manufacturers, said Chen Jun, vice-president and chief analyst of Sigmaintell. The research firm also said shipments of 5G-enabled smartphones in China are expected to rise 70 percent to 260 million units this year, with a penetration rate of 74 percent. "The worldwide foldable smartphone shipments are set to witness rapid growth in the next few years, and the figure will reach 74 million units in 2025 from nearly 4 million in 2020," Chen said. Foldable phone prices will likely drop to less than 10,000 yuan ($1,546) each this year, as Chinese OEM’s OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi and possibly Google launch a foldable phone this year.
Sigmaintell forecasts global shipments of 5G smartphones to surge to 550 million units this year from 230 million units in 2020.
According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, 163 million 5G phones were shipped in China last year, and 218 new 5G models were rolled out.
OLED, panels used in smartphones reached 83 million units in the Chinese market last year, Chen said. He predicted shipments will reach 100 million units in 2021, with flexible OLED panels accounting for 70 percent of all types of OLED panels. "Chinese players led by Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi have now adopted OLED panels in their mid-tier portfolios ($300-$500) to differentiate their products. This is one of the key reasons for the growth of AMOLED smartphones," wrote Jene Park, a senior research analyst at Counterpoint Research, in a research note.
Sigmaintell says, "The penetration rate of OLED panels in smartphones will rise to 40 percent this year." BOE Technology Group Co Ltd, Visionox Technology Inc and China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co Ltd are banking on the flexible screens mainly used in smartphones.
- BOE owns three sixth-generation active-matrix organic light-emitting diode, or AMOLED, production lines. It started mass production of the flexible panels from its facility in Chengdu, Sichuan province, in October 2017. The panels have already been used by more than 10 smartphone manufacturers. The company's second production line in Mianyang, Sichuan province, began mass production in 2019, while its third facility in Chongqing is expected to start operations this year.
- Xu Fengying, vice-president of Visionox, said flexible AMOLEDs will have wider applications in smartphones, computers, smart wearables, vehicles, virtual reality and augmented reality because of surging demand for flexible display screens. Visionox's AMOLED display screen production line in Gu'an, Hebei province, began operations in 2018. It has a capacity of 30,000 glass substrates/month and can produce foldable screens for 90 million smartphones. It started building its second flexible AMOLED production line in Hefei, Anhui province, in December 2018.
Figure 1: Samsung Note
The future of the Galaxy Note series is in peril, and rumors fly in every direction, killing the Note or letting it live for one final moment before the final curtain. Samsung has been seriously entertaining the idea of scrapping the Galaxy Note lineup in 2021 in order to “unify the brand,” potentially merging the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note lines.