How quickly can an inherently flawed mobile technology mature in this day and age? Judging from the Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G, which looks absolutely stunning and almost surprisingly refined despite its predecessor’s highly publicized manufacturing defects, the answer can be as quickly as one year.
Of course, it’s far too early to know how
Samsung‘s second-gen foldable flagship will hold up in long-term real-world usage, and until Corning rolls out a Gorilla Glass generation capable of bending, it’s certainly wise to expect a higher degree of frailty from these bad boys when compared to conventional smartphones.
But it’s pretty clear that the company will take a big leap towards making foldable devices mainstream this holiday season, and it’s definitely not surprising to hear that Samsung has set rather lofty sales goals for the extravagant
Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G.
800,000 units will be produced this year alone
If that doesn’t sound like such a remarkable figure, you’re probably not looking at it from the right angle. Compared to the 8.5 million unit sales tipped for the
Galaxy Note 20 duo, the number is indeed not very impressive, but
the same forecast from almost a month ago called for only 500,000 Z Fold 2 shipments in 2020.
In case you’re wondering, the first-gen
Galaxy Fold sold around 400,000 copies between its belated September 2019 commercial debut and the end of the year, so Samsung is essentially gearing up to boost that score by 100 percent.
At $2,000 a pop, that’s a lot of revenue for a company
struggling with declining volumes worldwide, and according to inside sources, the chaebol has finally managed to stabilize the phone’s yield rate at factories in not one and not two but three different countries, currently focusing on “cutting costs for foldable smartphone production” to further increase its profit margins.
This is still the beginning of something much bigger
When put into the right context, 800,000 is arguably a pretty solid number. But it’s still nothing compared to the true potential of the foldable market segment. While this is unlikely to be fulfilled anytime soon, Samsung might be able to jump to no less than 8 million unit sales in total as early as 2021 thanks to a “diversified foldable product lineup.”
Said expanded lineup could include everything from a further upgraded and refined Galaxy Z Fold 3 to an inexpensive Z Fold Lite, a largely mysterious Z Fold S with both inward and outward-folding capabilities, and of course, the Galaxy Z Flip family.
That’s right, Samsung is predicted to close the year with 3 million foldable shipments overall, yielding a massive profit at a time of great uncertainty for the mobile industry as a whole and big struggles for high-end smartphones in particular. That’s what happens when you don’t throw in the towel after
one failed attempt at a revolution.
