Tucked in an industry report about Samsung’s production plans for laptops with OLED displays comes the tip that it is also preparing to release one with a foldable 17.3-inch panel of its own come 2023. Samsung was supposed to out it this year, but has apparently postponed the launch for reasons that are not shared by the industry insiders in the Korean media report citing research firm Omdia.
HP is the other laptop maker which has put off the launch of its 17-inch device with foldable LG display for next year, so the delays might have something to do with the current state of tepid notebook demand as those bendy OLED panels don’t come cheap The recently released Asus ZenBook 17 Fold (US$3,500 over at Amazon), for instance, carries a foldable 17-inch screen supplied by BOE, and at this price level it may be considered a niche device. That is why Asus has allegedly only ordered 10,000 such panels to BOE, and ditto for HP’s order to LG.
If Samsung gets into the foldable laptop display game with its own machine, however, its starting price may be lower, given that it will be sourcing the panel from its own subsidiary that happens to be the world’s largest OLED display maker. This, and the constantly increasing OLED laptop display orders by Asus, have upped Samsung’s projections to 8.5 million such panels for 2023, up from about 6 million for this year.
Moreover, the first Samsung laptop with foldable 17.3-inch OLED screen will have the largest remaining screen real estate of 13.3 inches diagonal when folded, unlike HP’s upcoming device whose 17-incher will fold into an 11-inch device.
The Asus ZenBook 17 Fold offers the second largest diagonal, as it presents a 12.6-inch screen when closed, while the ThinkPad X1 Fold Gen 2, which is actually the bestselling model in the category, has a 16.3-inch OLED panel that folds into a 12-incher when closed.
Wooed by tech since the industrial espionage of Apple computers and the times of pixelized Nintendos, Daniel went and opened a gaming club when personal computers and consoles were still an expensive rarity. Nowadays, fascination is not with specs and speed but rather the lifestyle that computers in our pocket, house, and car have shoehorned us into, from the infinite scroll and the privacy hazards to authenticating every bit and move of our existence.
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