Huawei isn’t the top Chinese OEM for nothing. The company knows technology and innovation. It’s able to release premium smartphones that compete with those from Samsung and Apple. It is currently the third largest phone maker in the world next to the two mentioned. Even without the US as one of its key markets, Huawei is still proving many things. In the first half of 2018, it released another first—triple cameras on the flagship P20 Pro. And as expected, the latter has been winning in many categories and benchmarks.
China’s Huawei has been busier the past few months and we’ve got word it will introduce its very first foldable smartphone. It’s only one of few OEMs working on the technology but it may beat Samsung. You see, the South Korean tech giant has been working on the Galaxy X foldable phone the past few years. We’ve been watching its development and we we were told the foldable phone will be revealed in January, before the Galaxy S10 is out.
We heard that Huawei started working on its own foldable smartphone last April as it wants to beat Samsung to the punch. As for Huawei, we have some information that may prove it is almost ready.
The foldable phone will make use of a flexible OLED manufactured by BOE Technology, a known panel supplier in China. According to sources, the volume of the first Huawei foldable phone will only be 20,000 to 30,000 units. That is a small number but perhaps enough to gauge the willingness of the mobile industry if a foldable phone will be welcome.
Huawei is believed to be making the effort “mainly to demonstrate its technological capability and to attract the industry’s attention and media coverage.” The phone won’t be out this 2018 but in early 2019. If that’s the case, both Huawei and Samsung hurry up. We can’t wait to know which company may succeed first. Meanwhile, panel supplier BOE, may also need to work fast on the foldable OLED screen so Huawei can start finalizing the design and start production.
SOURCE: NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW
