Plot Twist: Why Samsung Wants Apple to Release a Rival Foldable iPhone

In the wake of the Galaxy Fold announcement, Samsung doesn’t just expect its competitors to release foldable phones. It actually wants them to.

Samsung Display has reportedly sent Apple a 7.2-inch foldable sample display for its iPhone devices, according to a Korean-language report from ETNews. The South Korean tech giant also provided Google with a similar sample.

Those sample displays may not be exactly the same as the panels on the Galaxy Fold. The iPhone display provided to Apple is about 0.1 inches smaller than the one on the Galaxy Fold, ETNews points out.

But the report does suggest that Samsung is banking on the fact that other smartphone OEMs will follow in its footsteps by releasing their own folding devices.

Samsung is believed to be able to produce 200,000 foldable OLED displays per month, or about 2.4 million units a year. But the company is also considering bumping up its productivity capacity to 10 million units a year if the demand calls for it.

Apple, for its part, is largely expected to debut a foldable iPhone in the near future. Past reports have indicated that the first foldable Apple flagship could debut in 2020 at the earliest.

And while there hasn’t been much word about a folding Pixel device, it stands to reason that Google is mulling the next-generation form factor for its own devices, too. Google is already working with Samsung to optimize Android for foldable hardware.

That’s not exactly an unexpected development. Samsung has long been a display-making superpower and the largest manufacturer of OLED panels.

On the other hand, Samsung isn’t the only display maker in the space. Back in 2017, Apple was rumored to be working with LG on folding display technology. The Cupertino tech giant has long sought to lessen its reliance on single suppliers.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding foldable devices, but the form factor itself is unproven and has quite a few hurdles to overcome. Despite that, the smartphone industry as a whole seems all too happy to jump on the foldable trend bandwagon.

Smartphone trends like this one aren’t exactly new. But this one may turn out to be extremely lucrative for Samsung.