Samsung’s reportedly ready to supply foldable displays to rival companies

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Enlarge / The Galaxy Z Flip (left) and Galaxy Z Fold 2 (right). Samsung will be selling both of these display styles to competitors now. (credit: Samsung)

A report from ETNews claims that Samsung Display is ready to expand its foldable-display business and start selling to companies other than Samsung Electronics' phone division. Flexible panels were previously exclusive to Samsung's phone division, but the report says Samsung Display plans to sell 1 million panels this year in the open market. ETNews quotes a source saying "multiple Chinese smartphones markets" are working with Samsung and plan to ship devices in the second half of 2021.

A million panels isn't a huge supply compared to the ~350 million smartphones sold annually, but that is about the size of the foldable market in these early days. Canalys' last numbers said 1.74 million foldables were sold from September 2019 to June 2020, which represents the first generation of foldables, before the launch of the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Samsung hopes to see that number grow a lot in 2021, with ETNews reporting Samsung Display will supply 10 million foldable displays to the phone division.

It doesn't sound like the third parties buying from Samsung will have a lot of wiggle room in terms of form factor. According to the report, Samsung is supplying two types of displays: one that folds across the horizontal axis like the Galaxy Z Flip, and one that folds across the vertical axis like the Galaxy Z Fold. The industry isn't quite sure what a flexible display smartphone should look like, and at trade shows, various companies have pitched all sorts of wild form factors. There are concepts for rollable display smartphones, outward-folding displays like the Huawei Mate X, and tri-folding smartphones that fold up like a wallet or a brochure. It doesn't sound like Samsung will be humoring any of those form factors just yet.

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