Humanity really can’t decide what it wants out of a phone.
When the first cell phones debuted, they were massive, and the race was on to shrink them so they could fit in our pockets. Then, we collectively decided that phones should also fold in half. Today, smartphones are getting bigger and flatter. Next, Samsung thinks we’re going to want to fold our phones yet again, and the company is forecasting a foldable smartphone revolution next year.
“The industry believes that the commercialization of foldable smartphones will be possible in 2016,” a Samsung official told Business Korea.
Samsung
Of all the companies that could benefit from such a shift in smartphone trends, Samsung is best positioned to take advantage of a flexible-display craze. The company has been showing off its bendable touchscreen technology for years, even going as far as to create concept videos of what it has in mind.
Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge is just the latest example of the company’s obsession with curved display technology. Its curved 4K televisions, while quite expensive, have been very well received. Of course, there’s a big difference between a static curve and a bendable display, but Samsung has also shown examples of the latter at events like CES as far back as 2013.
Will you actually be able to purchase a foldable smartphone in 2016? We won’t know the answer to that question for a while. But if there’s one company bold enough to risk even more of its smartphone R&D budget on a technology that could crash and burn—or perhaps achieve wild success—it’s definitely Samsung.
Screengrab via Samsung/YouTube