Samsung's "new hope" against the iPhone: betting on high-end folding screen phones

Samsung Electronics is making the biggest tweak to the company's smartphone strategy in years, betting on foldable phones to take on Apple.

Bloomberg reported that Samsung Electronics is making adjustments to the company's smartphone strategy, restructuring around the company's best-selling Galaxy S and foldable Galaxy Z series devices. The company currently plans to discontinue the Note series of phones equipped with a stylus, apply this feature to other models (such as the Galaxy S22), and launch a high-end foldable phone to challenge Apple.

As part of the company's restructuring, Samsung merged its mobile and consumer electronics businesses into one division late last year. Samsung says it's doing this to create a more cohesive ecosystem of products that will help the company's devices outperform competition from rivals like Apple, Xiaomi and Oppo.

TM Roh, head of Samsung's mobile business, said in an interview that Samsung will focus on the high-end market as its growth engine and plans to expand the Note experience in its Galaxy hardware ecosystem, covering tablets, laptops and mobile phones, mainly launching the S series in the first half and innovative foldable products in the second half.

In terms of S series products, Samsung Electronics released the latest Galaxy S22 series products on Wednesday.

The Galaxy S22 series is still three models, namely the S22, S22+ and S22 Ultra. The S22 and S22+ feature 6.1-inch and 6.6-inch straight-screen designs, respectively, and the S22 Ultra features a 6.8-inch curved screen with 2K ultra-high resolution. The S22 Ultra is the first product in the S series with a built-in stylus "S Pen", following the Note series design.

At present, global smartphone manufacturers seem to be setting off new competition in the foldable mobile phone space. At the beginning of this year, three domestic mobile phone manufacturers intensively released the latest folding screen mobile phones. Looking at the entire industry, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Honor have successively released new folding screen mobile phones. Industry news said that vivo will also launch its own folding screen mobile phone in the first quarter of 2022.

For the continuous entry of competitors, TM Roh commented that this confirms that Samsung made the right strategic decision in the early days, and the company expects the entire folding mobile phone industry and application ecosystem to grow as a result. Many new models may use Samsung's flexible display in their designs.

The analysis believes that the key technical points and value increments of the folding screen mobile phone industry chain are mainly flexible OLED, UTG glass protection cover, hinge and hinge. In terms of flexible OLED panels and UTT glass protection covers, Samsung is currently in a monopoly situation. Even if it doesn't sell the phone directly, Samsung can profit by selling the relevant flexible OLED to competitors.