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Apple is often not the first to launch new technologies or features. It often allows other manufacturers to experiment and bring innovation to consumers, while working on a product that is usually more mature and complete. More than two years have passed since Samsung and other manufacturers launched their folding devices, and now we are getting the first significant signals about Apple’s future entry into the field.
Apple will be the “big winner” in the field of folding
Analyst Ming-Chi Ko, one of the top and most respected analysts in everything related to Apple (and the one who first revealed that it will sell the iPhone 12 without a charger), now claims that the American giant is working on launching a foldable iPhone, which will include an 8-inch OLED display in 2023 . This emerges from a document for investors who Ko wrote and came to the MacRumors website.
According to Ko, Apple plans to produce the new iPhone with a folding display with QHD + resolution, with the supplier of the same display and all the related components being manufactured by the screens division of the big competitor – Samsung. Kav wrote to investors that Apple plans to sell between 15 and 20 million units of the folding iPhone by 2023.
The senior analyst predicts that the folding smartphones have not yet reached their peak, and are expected to be a “must-have” in the future for each of the smartphone makers. According to Ko, “The folding devices will blur the boundaries between smartphones, tablets and laptops in the future.” What does it matter? The senior analyst says such a situation would be extremely successful for Apple – with its ecosystem and its advantage in hardware design level (with its M and A chips) – to be “the biggest winner of the folding device trend,” he said.
Ko further claims that although Apple will use the display and display components from Samsung, he says that Apple is going to use a different technology when it comes to the touch of the folding screen. “Future folding devices will require touch technology that will support multiple folds, as opposed to one fold on existing smartphones,” Kav writes, adding that Apple will opt for Silver Nanowire technology – which can create electrodes for folding touch screens by connecting silver nanotubes – over technology Samsung’s Y-Octa (which enables the implementation of touch electrodes directly on the OLED display protection layer, AA), which will produce the folding screens for Apple.
Apple’s advantage in the field comes from the fact that it has previously dealt with the Silver Nanowire, when it used it for the touch interface of its smart speaker (which has already retired) – the HomePod. According to Kav, this is a move that will allow Apple to “specialize” in lower-cost technology, compared to entering as a completely new player in the field.
Ko previously reported cautiously about folding iPhones, when last March it claimed that Apple was considering developing a device with a 7.5 to 8-inch screen that hit the market in 2023, having previously objected that such a launch depends on solving significant technological and manufacturing issues. He notes that Apple has not “fired the official opening shot” in terms of development, but at the same time has added a lot of information on the subject since its last report.