The Foldable Smartphone Dream
May 15, 2017

Despite the recent volume of mundane smartphone upgrades, there may be a silver lining on the horizon. As we have reported previously, companies and users alike have long touted the idea of a foldable smartphone. Samsung Display’s Kim Tae-woong claimed that foldable displays would take two years to become reality and said, “Samsung Display is expected to commercialize foldable phones in 2019”. This news contradicts earlier leaks suggesting that the launch of foldable smartphones in 2017. There are numerous reasons why some believe foldable smartphone technology is still some ways off

• The Business Aspect – Companies are in no hurry to introduce foldable smartphones to the market right now. Curved glass and bezel-free displays are still immensely popular now and are in huge demand. Samsung reportedly enjoys 20% operating profits with bezel-free displays. It makes sense to launch foldable screens once sales for bezel-free displays slow down. This especially applies to Samsung after the recent Note 7 fiasco. Samsung cannot afford to take any major risks right now and need to deliver sure-shot successes.

• Technological Barrier – Despite significant advancements, foldable smartphone technology still has issues that need to be worked out. Batteries and circuits are inflexible components that need to be accounted for. The durability of these smartphones is also under question.
• Adoption Of OLED panels – Flexible displays lend themselves much better to OLED displays rather than LCD. Many popular smartphones like the iPhone still use LCD displays. The rise of foldable smartphones requires more widespread OLED adoption.
• Preserving Image Quality – So far, most flexible displays that have been demoed have featured a plastic polymer screen. This raises the concern of inferior image quality and clarity when compared to glass screens. Corning’s flexible Glass could be a possible solution to this issue.
• Exorbitant Pricing – Just like any cutting edge technology, foldable smartphones are likely to be extremely expensive to manufacture in the beginning. Mass consumer adoption will require prices to come down to acceptable levels.

These conclusions seem to miss the point. First, the demand for the first foldable smartphone/tablet will be so great that the supplier will sell everything they can make and could charge a substantial premium; especially if there is only one supplier. Second, OLED capacity is growing at a rate that by 2023 it could quadruple. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the leaders to find ways to increase the functionality and the physical display size to reduce the supply/demand mismatch. Third the use of polyimide does not reduce the performance. DisplayMate, the leading evaluator of display performance touts the flexible displays as the best ever. The reason that the yellowish polyimide can be used is that the smartphones are top emission, so the light does not go through the backplane substrate. Willow glass would be nice but is more expensive then existing substrates, and does not yet have the curvature radius to support a foldable device. Finally as to costs, it has been proven that the fastest way to recover investments in new technology is to be first to market, where premium pricing is acceptable. As we have reported there is enormous pent up demand in the iPhone installed base to trade in iPhone 5, 6 and even 7s. A quality foldable device with a form factor comparable to today’s smartphones could take a big piece of that demand. If Samsung had a workable foldable display it would be on the market. However, there are likely still technical, form factor and functional issues to resolve. By the way, news has recently emerged that Samsung has now trademarked the Galaxy X moniker. There will be two Galaxy X models, the SM-X9000 Galaxy X1 and the SM-X9050 Galaxy X1+. Samsung could be planning a “limited” release of one or both handsets in either third or the fourth quarter of 2017, suggesting this may be a limited run model to test the waters. A full-blown launch would occur next year, probably with a refined galaxy models based on consumer response to their 2017 release.
 
Samsung is not the only company investing in foldable smartphones. Nokia, LG, OPPO, Microsoft, Huawei, JDI, Lenovo and Vivo are all also developing their own designs. Current technological limitations mean that we probably won’t be seeing completely foldable smartphones in the near future. More likely, these devices will have a rigid spine holding all the components that can’t be flexed, while the rest of the device is flexible. Another possible implementation could be folding along a set boundary allowing for “flip phone” like designs. We also previously reported on the possibility of a Samsung manufactured a foldable smartphone that unfurls into a tablet form factor. There is a lot riding on the idea of a foldable smartphone. In the smartphone industry, it is often the company, which packs the most innovation in its devices that tastes the most success. A report by Strategy Analytics claims that foldable smartphones could capture as much as 12% of the global smartphone market in 2022! This would indicate that the market for foldable devices is a lucrative one, and companies will want to take advantage of this fact.

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