However, a forecast for 2023 shows a decrease in demand.
Expect to see the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 in the near future, with an announcement coming in the next few months. Details of the Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 have already started to leak before the phones are even in the hands of early users.
Korean website This year’s smartphones have been revealed by Elec(opens in new tab), which provides a good deal of information about them.
Qualcomm’s next major processor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, will be found in these devices, as you would imagine. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 just has that one piece of information, but the bigger foldable has more to offer in the way of camera details.
Samsung’s Isocell GN3 — a 50MP sensor with a pixel size of 1.0m — is expected to lead the Galaxy Z Fold 5’s triple-camera array. That’s a significant improvement over the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, but it won’t be enough to compete with the rumored 50-megapixel camera on the future Fold 4.
Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 3 was said to include a 12MP front-facing camera, but there is no mention of a second one. However, this might also imply that Samsung has concluded that the Z Fold 3’s under-screen camera was not worth reproducing in a future generation, although the specifics have not been verified.
Trouble ahead?
That being said, these information may not be the most exciting ones, but this is still very early in the game. It’s worth noting that these are really small details in an otherwise fascinating story regarding Samsung’s sales forecasts for its next foldables.
Samsung expects to sell 10 million Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 devices in 2023, based on the current sales data. When you consider that just 7.1 million of last year’s smartphone sales were foldables(opens in new tab), and that the phone will most likely only be available for five months of that time period, it’s an impressive number.
However, according to the same article, Samsung expects to sell 15 million foldable devices by 2022. According to Samsung’s own projections, demand for its products is expected to decline in the next year.
What is the cause of this decrease? Consumer electronics demand is projected to be weakened as a result of a combination of well-known issues.
According to the (machine-translated) research, increasing raw material costs, intensifying fears about stagflation, and the resurgence of Covid-19 have all contributed to a rise in uncertainty regarding demand for IT and household appliances, including cellphones.
A look at the figures shows that they’ve turned bullish again. We’ll have to wait and see whether their optimism is well-founded or mistaken.