The folding screen phone market is very vibrant. Will Apple enter this market and make a breakthrough with the "foldable iPhone"?
Apple's iPhone 15 models brought big changes when they launched last September with USB-C charging and many other camera improvements. But Apple is still late, not yet releasing the "foldable iPhone". Meanwhile, many other phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Google, Motorola and OnePlus have been selling folding screen phones for many years now.
Apple is "slow" in the folding screen smartphone segment
Apple is holding a dominant position in the high-end phone segment. However, folding screen phone manufacturers are also following closely behind and becoming competitive with "Apple" in this segment. According to Motorola, 20% of users of its Motorola Razr folding screen smartphone have switched from iPhone.
Currently, Samsung has launched 5 generations of folding screen smartphones with the Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Z Fold models, the Galaxy Z 6 series will be launched this fall. Along with that, Google and Oneplus have entered this market since last year.
This puts Apple at risk of losing potential customers and being easily "overtaken" by other "competitors" like Samsung. Furthermore, "Battened Apple" is also likely to lose its advantage when it is slow to launch the "foldable iPhone". Foldable phone users may be too familiar with the Android operating system. By the time Apple's folding iPhone models launch, they won't want to switch to iOS.
Does the folding screen iPhone have a place?
In fact, Apple doesn't need to worry too much. According to statistics, sales of folding screen phones have reached 20 million units globally by 2023. At the same time, Apple sold 26.5 million iPhone 14 Pro Max units in just the first half of the year.
Apple always knows how to observe the market and choose the right time to launch its products. Apple is not the first brand to produce smartphones, tablets, smartwatches or laptops. However, this brand has found a way to improve and add value to those technology products, making them more useful and attractive. This is also the reason why Apple product lines such as iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac dominate the current technology market.
Users not only look forward to Apple launching "foldable iPhones" but also have high expectations for their design improvements. Folding screen phones on the market today are making many users frustrated because they are just smaller variations of regular rectangular smartphones.
And yet, folding screen phones are a big step forward in technology, but this product line has not really brought many changes in user experience. For example, when touch screens were introduced, users did not need to use physical buttons to enter text. However, although folding screens have had some improvements in screen quality, there has been no change in how users interact with the screen.
Users once hoped that Google's Pixel Fold would bring a new step forward for folding screen phones. But in the end, this phone still failed to bring real breakthroughs. Users can only continue to look to Apple - a company famous for its success in product innovation - to find improvements for folding screen phones.
Folding screen phones not only need innovation in product design but also need improvements in software. Folding screen phones on the market today only run the standard Android version with some user interface tweaks. They're basically just regular phones that can bend.
Very few Android developers apply folding screen design. The reason is that the number of users of folding screen smartphones is not large enough to compensate for the cost and effort of adjusting the software on many different screen sizes. Furthermore, multiple foldable phone formats compatible with the same software would break Android's unified platform. However, Apple could change that like they did with the iPhone and iPad.
With close relationships with leading software developers and the company's powerful team, users can fully expect Apple to bring outstanding improvements to the "foldable iPhone".