In a move that seems as obvious as Samsung making OLED TVs, there are rumours brewing about the South Korean electronics giant venturing into the market of laptops with foldable screens. In fact, this could happen as early as next year, with reports indicating that it would be a 17.3″ OLED panel that can fold down into a 13.3″ display.
Samsung has already established itself as the market leader in the folding phone market with their Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip smartphones, so it would make sense for them to expand their folding expertise into other types of devices as well. Currently, this laptop with a folding screen market is still in its infancy with only a handful of devices ready for consumers to buy, but the potential is absolutely there.
I’ve personally had the chance to check out early devices like the ThinkPad X1 Fold (first generation) and more recently the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED (which won our Bronze award in the SoyaCincau Awards 2022), and it was probably the most exciting laptop I got he chance to check out. The potential was excellent, but the products themselves had a long way to go from a hardware and pricing perspective. For context, Asus’ laptop would set you back RM14,999 and I don’t think it’s anywhere near reliable enough for that kind of dough.
With the experience Samsung has in the folding device market though, this could be a pivotal turning point. Not only would they be able to source the screens themselves, allowing them more control over the pricing, but their smartphones have proven that they have figured out the hinge mechanism probably better than anyone else from a durability and reliability standpoint.
This same report indicated that Samsung was actually planning on releasing their new folding screen device this year, but it was postponed due to “unknown reasons”, so the product could be more ready than you might think.
The only downside for Malaysians is that if this folding screen does end up being a laptop, the odds of us getting one here are incredibly low. Samsung already make a bunch of laptops and Galaxy Books, but they’ve just never made their way into the Malaysian market. Regardless, I’m excited, and I think you should be too. We could be looking at the next generation of portable computing devices.
