While Samsung is on its fourth generation of foldable phones, Apple has yet to get its boots on. But that will change in the next two years with the first foldable iPad or MacBook according to Samsung.
According to the Korean site the elect (opens in a new tab)According to sources, representatives from Samsung’s mobile division met with vendors in October to discuss the smartphone market.
There, Samsung attendees reportedly stated that they expect Apple to join the foldable market in 2024, but not with a foldable iPhone to compete with the sixth-generation Galaxy Z Flip or Galaxy Z Fold phones. Instead, the company hopes Apple will join the party with a foldable iPad, or perhaps a foldable laptop.
While Samsung would be interested in talking about the possibility of Apple backing its innovation, this isn’t the first time Apple’s potential foldable tablet strategy has been rumored. Last month, the research company CCS Insight also predicted that Apple would first test a folding screen on an iPadthat you don’t want to gamble on fundamentally changing your biggest salesperson.
“Right now it doesn’t make sense for Apple to make a foldable iPhone,” chief analyst Ben Wood said at the time. “We think they’ll buck that trend and probably dip a toe in the water with a foldable iPad.”
A smart, yet risk-averse approach
Competition is also much less fierce in the world of tablets. There aren’t just a handful of foldable tablets out there (the Foldable Asus ZenBook Y Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Foldable being two such examples), but it’s hard to overstate Apple’s control of the tablet market.
while around 28% of people use an iPhone worldwide (opens in a new tab), more than 50% of the tablet market is branded iPad (opens in a new tab). Admittedly, it’s a significantly smaller pie, but that makes it a relatively low-risk testing lab.
That makes a degree of sense. The main thing that prevents me from carrying my iPad mini in my pocket at all times is the fact that I physically can’t, it’s too wide. If Apple was able to create an iPad that could fold to half its width or height, that’s a serious selling point, especially if it’s still compatible with the Apple Pencil.
Of course, the line between phone and tablet has been deliberately blurred by the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold series, and it’s not impossible that a theoretical 5G foldable iPad could do something similar, depending on where the fold line is. At 7.7 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches, the ipad mini 6 It is not that much bigger than him Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 (6.1 x 5.1 x 0.21 inches) when open, after all.
Here’s the iPad mini vs. the open Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3captured by my colleague Roland, who also wishes for a foldable iPad minifor comparison.
But maybe Apple is thinking of going the other way and using a foldable form factor as a way to make the iPad grow even bigger than the iPad. iPad Pro 12.9-inch. The company is rumored to be considering both. 14 inches Y 16 inch tabletsso perhaps a foldable screen is a way to make that unwieldy form factor a bit more portable.