What you need to know
- Samsung's newly appointed mobile chief boasted that the company could make phones with even more folds in the screen.
- However, it's not going to do so for now because it doesn't think it'll add value for customers.
- He also stated that the Galaxy Fold took seven years to develop.
Spurred by the Galaxy Z Flip's triumphant launch, the new head of Samsung's mobile division took to the press to boast of the company's engineering prowess vis-a-vis foldable phones. In an interview with the Korea Herald, Roh Tae-moon stated that the company was already capable of producing phones with more than two folds in the screen.
"The foldable phone market is yet in infancy," he said. As a result, not only does Samsung have tempered expectations regarding the sales of the nascent product category, but it's also reluctant to push the technology too far when the foldable ecosystem is still immature.
It's also important to have an ecosystem for sufficient content and services before releasing more foldable variants. We can release new foldable phones at an opportune time when there are enough services available on those phones and provide needed values for consumers.
Lastly, he clarified the company's strategy for the Galaxy Fold and the Galaxy Z series. With the latter, Samsung's focus will be on improving the convenience and portability factor, while the Fold series will continue to experiment with enabling customers to use larger screens in a smaller form factor. The end result, he says, is a future in which people can carry around phones of whatever size they find most useful by folding the screen upon itself one or more times.
The Galaxy Z Flip is Samsung's second folding phone, and it costs $1380
