Galaxy Fold: Samsung dials back exec hint that it's sold a million foldable phones
Young Sohn may have quoted the initial sales target rather than actual sales.
- She has a master's degree in journalism from Syracuse University.
Samsung Galaxy Fold is a bit off the million sales mark, a report said.
Samsung downplayed an exec's comments that there could be as many as 1 million Galaxy Folds in the wild. A spokesperson for the Korean company told Yonhap that Electronics President Young Sohn could have been referring to the company's initial sales target for the year. It apparently made it clear that sales of the foldable phone haven't hit 1 million units yet.
"There's a million people that want to use this product at $2,000," Sohn said at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in Berlin last Thursday.
Samsung hoped to sell 500,000 Galaxy Fold globally in 2020, Yonhap noted. The phone-maker didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The phone, which lets you bend its 7.3-inch screen in half, made its way to consumers in September, three months late after early reviewers encountered issues with the screen malfunctioning. CNET's Jessica Dolcourt called it a promising blueprint for foldable phones, but still too expensive and too fragile. In a durability text, CNET founded out the phone lasts for about 120,000 folds.
This year has seen a wave of foldable phones being unveiled, confirmed or actually making their way to market, typically at premium prices to go with the novel designs. Along with Samsung's $1,980 Galaxy Fold, there's the $1,500 Motorola Razr (which goes on sale Jan. 9), the roughly $2,600 Huawei Mate X (available only in China at the moment) and the $1,300 Royole Flexpai. Xiaomi's entrant is still in the works, TCL expects to release something next year and Google has said it's prototyping foldable technology.
Originally published Dec. 12 at 9:50 a.m. PT.
Update, Dec. 16 at 3:50 a.m. PT: Adds Samsung's reported clarification.
