It’s hard to get one even with a price increase of tens of thousands: Are foldable phones the future trend or a niche demand?

“What’s your prediction? How many thousands will the Mate Xs sell for this time?”

Huawei has just released the new generation of foldable screen mobile phone Mate Xs, and digital enthusiasts have begun to predict the price increase level after the sale in the forum. "40,000", "60,000", "No more than 100,000?" Participants gave answers one after another. It is worth noting that the official price of Mate Xs in the Chinese market is 16,999 yuan.

In contrast to the popularity of foldable screen phones, although four manufacturers, including Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, and Royole, entered the foldable screen phone market last year, data shows that the global shipments of foldable smartphones in 2019 were still less than 1 million. Are foldable screen phones a future trend or a niche demand?

Manufacturers have entered the market and the prices are extremely high

As early as October 2018, Royole Technology, which focuses on the research and development of flexible screens, released the world's first foldable screen mobile phone, FlexPai, with a starting price of 8,999 yuan and a maximum price of 12,999 yuan. However, due to brand appeal issues and production capacity reasons, the sales volume of FlexPai is not large.

It was not until February 2019 that the entry of Huawei and Samsung made foldable screen mobile phones one of the important directions for mainstream mobile phone manufacturers.

However, the embarrassing thing is that Samsung Galaxy Fold turned over before it was officially launched: many foreign media reviewers encountered problems the next day after receiving the review machine, with screen flickering, broken pixels, and even the entire screen going black. Samsung had to announce the postponement of the launch of Galaxy Fold.

Huawei's Mate X also did not go well. At MWC2019, Huawei's consumer business CEO Richard Yu promised that the Mate X would go on sale in mid-2019, but it was repeatedly postponed and was not unveiled in China until October 2019.

In November 2019, Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X were officially launched in the Chinese market, with the former priced at 15,999 yuan and the latter at 16,999 yuan.

Due to insufficient production capacity and the appeal of Huawei's brand in this special period, Huawei Mate X has been sought after by some consumers. The price was once increased by middlemen to as high as 40,000 to 60,000 yuan, and some consumers also chose to buy it and then resell it. On Xianyu, there was even a price tag of 99,999 yuan.

Huawei's newly released second-generation foldable screen phone Mate Xs has also long been seen as a business opportunity by middlemen. Compared with Mate X, Mate Xs has upgraded the latest Kirin 990 processor, and its domestic price remains at 16,999 yuan. In the eyes of middlemen, this may have more room for further price increases.

Currently, the Mate X has been discontinued, but its price on Xianyu remains above 20,000 yuan; and the Mate Xs, which has not yet been officially launched, has already appeared on Xianyu with a maximum price of 89,999 yuan.

"Will anyone really spend tens of thousands of yuan to buy this phone?" one user commented. A digital enthusiast said frankly that he would never consider buying it for himself at this price, but would try to snap it up and resell it to make a profit.

At 10:08 on the 26th, Huawei Mate Xs opened for pre-orders and will go on sale at 10:08 on March 5. According to media statistics, as of 18:08 on the 26th, the total number of pre-orders for the product on the three major platforms of Huawei Mall, JD.com, and Tmall has exceeded 360,000.

There are still technical problems and insufficient production capacity

Foldable screen mobile phones are sold at a higher price, partly because consumers are eager to try them out, and partly because of insufficient production capacity due to technical difficulties.

Industry insiders analyzed that the technical problems of foldable screen mobile phones mainly lie in the folding screen and hinge. In addition, system optimization and software adaptation are also important aspects affecting the consumer experience.

As for foldable screens, due to the huge differences in screen shape and production process from traditional mobile phone screens, only a few supply chain manufacturers such as Samsung and BOE have the capacity for mass production. From the supply chain level, the production yield of foldable screens is not high enough; and from the consumer use level, the screen of foldable screen mobile phones needs to withstand multiple foldings every day, and must also withstand the test of anti-fall, dust and water resistance.

The delays of Samsung Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X were partly due to screen issues. On the new generation of Huawei Mate Xs, the display screen uses a double-layer aerospace-grade polyimide flexible material. Yu Chengdong claimed that the price of this special material is higher than gold. Huawei also uses a double-layer polymer structure to polymerize two layers of film together through flexible optical glue, which enhances the screen display while being safer and more durable. In addition, Huawei also laminated a layer of customized protective film on the surface of the flexible screen to enhance the protection of the screen.

The hinge structure is also a key technology for foldable phones. The design and production threshold of the hinge is relatively high, involving many metal parts and complex assembly procedures. At the same time, the requirements for structural precision, durability, and thinness are even much higher than those for the hinge of a laptop computer. According to Yu Chengdong, the hinge structure of the Huawei Mate Xs is composed of more than 100 precision components, using a variety of special materials and special manufacturing processes.

Due to the difference in screen shape between foldable phones and traditional smartphones, system optimization and software adaptation have also become one of the difficulties.

The differences in screen size and usage of foldable screens among various manufacturers will bring considerable challenges to the adaptation of third-party applications. This has always been a difficult pain point to solve on Android tablets. Many App developers only adapt to mobile phones, resulting in a series of experience problems when these Apps are displayed on tablets.

What is more challenging is that the form of foldable screen phones is also changing. For example, Lenovo and Samsung have launched the Motorola Razr and Galaxy Z Flip, foldable phones respectively. This has even triggered a battle over the route. Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing once compared the Motorola Razr with the foldable screen products of Huawei and Samsung, saying that what the competitors released was not a mobile phone but a tablet. "I personally don't think highly of the foldable product form that folds the mobile phone into a tablet," he said.

This series of technical problems has brought many challenges to the production, sales and use of foldable screen mobile phones. The Motorola Razr was also delayed for a time due to supply issues.

Another derivative problem is that due to the long R&D cycle, foldable screen phones also face the embarrassment of outdated configuration after release. For example, the Motorola Razr is equipped with a Snapdragon 710 processor, which has caused criticism among domestic consumers. Yang Yuanqing promised that the second-generation foldable screen products are under development and will also meet the needs of domestic consumers in terms of configuration; the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, which was just released in February this year, is equipped with a Snapdragon 855+ chip, and the network only supports 4G but not 5G. The hardware configuration is basically at the level of last year's Android flagship phones.

Future trend or niche demand?

High prices and insufficient production capacity have cast a shadow on the future development of foldable screen phones.

According to data from Strategy Analytics, although Samsung, Huawei and other manufacturers have made a lot of efforts in the research and development and promotion of foldable screen mobile phones in 2019, the global shipments of foldable smartphones that year were still less than 1 million. Paul Brown, director of user experience innovation research at the agency, said: The ability of foldable screens to solve actual consumer pain points is crucial to whether these devices will become a niche or dominant specification in the smartphone market. In the future, until costs drop, it will be difficult to break through the sales of these devices.

In fact, different mobile phone manufacturers have different attitudes towards foldable screen mobile phones, such as vivo, Xiaomi and OPPO.

Hu Bashan, executive vice president of vivo, once expressed that he was not optimistic about the short-term prospects of foldable phones: there are still some technical defects, and the added value to consumers is also questionable. High costs and high prices are also important influencing factors.

In 2019, Xiaomi released a video of a dual-folding folding screen mobile phone and officially released a surround screen concept phone, Xiaomi MIX Alpha, which uses a completely different screen form factor from the folding screen and claims to achieve a 180.6% screen-to-body ratio. Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun believes that the surround screen may be the mainstream terminal form factor in the 5G era. However, this product is priced at 19,999 yuan and was originally expected to be launched at the end of December 2019, but it has been delayed for 3 months.

Wu Qiang, OPPO's vice president and global sales, talked about foldable screens in a media interview at the end of 2019. He said that the company has not found the core value of foldable screen phones for users, what problems they can help users solve, what needs or pain points they can meet, and what scenarios they are suitable for use in. Therefore, OPPO currently has no plans to launch foldable screen phones. In Wu Qiang's view, foldable screens are still a niche demand for those who seek novelty and difference.

However, many industry insiders remain optimistic about the prospects of foldable screen mobile phones.

Against the backdrop of the current downturn in the global and Chinese smartphone industry, many practitioners hope that foldable screen phones can open up a new category of mobile phones and, together with 5G, stimulate the smartphone industry to return to growth.

According to CITIC Securities' forecast, shipments of foldable phones will exceed 5.2 million units in 2020 and exceed 50 million units in 2025; while Strategy Analytics is more optimistic about the future data of foldable phones. Strategy Analytics analysts said that foldable phones will be the fastest growing segment of the high-end smartphone market in the next decade, with shipments reaching 100 million units in 2025.

Conclusion

Technology, production capacity, price...these are all obstacles to foldable-screen phones becoming the mainstream form of the smartphone market in the future.

Experts analyzed that the development of foldable screen mobile phones still needs the further maturity of the relevant supply chain to reduce costs and prices. For example, in terms of screens, it depends on screen suppliers such as Samsung and BOE to improve production yield and supply; hinge technology is still in the hands of a few manufacturers, and it depends on more and more supply chain companies to join in to reduce R&D and production costs; system and software optimization depends on the joint efforts of Google, various foldable screen manufacturers, and third-party developers to optimize the experience and create more valuable usage scenarios.

Just as full-screen solutions have gradually matured in smartphones, once these technical and supply issues are resolved, foldable screen phones may be expected to usher in further explosion.