What They Say
DSCC updated on its latest Foldable/Rollable Report and highlighted that panel shipments more than tripled to 10 million in 2021, up 207%. Smartphone shipments were 6% better than forecast at 7.98 million, up 254% because of the success of the Galaxy Z Flip 3, especially in Europe, where shipments were up 30% in Q4 on a quarterly basis. Samsung sold 88% of the foldables, up from 86% in 2020.
The firm expects panels as well as phone production and shipments to all double again in 2022 with SDC expected to ship 19 million panels. Google is expected to launch later this year and may be a landscape device like the Oppo Find N 5G (currently only available in China, I think – there’s a review here).
A change in the market is that DSCC expects a foldable using an ultra-thin-glass (UTG) foldable display, but one that is not from SDC and that will be a first. The glass will be processed by a Chinese firm – another first.
The article has plenty of detail on the plans of Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi et al. The firm is cautious about the prospects of Apple entering the foldable space and it may not arrive until 2025 or even later. However, DSCC thinks that Apple may be interested in a foldable notebook of as large as 20.X” that could be used as a system or just as a monitor. However, it could be four or five yeas away.
Finally, the blog suggests that Samsung has moved a multi-fold concept ahead of rollable or sliding device.
What We Think
It’s interesting that lots of the growth in 2021 was expected as SDC released more panels to companies other than Samsung Electronics, but in the end the firm took a bigger share of smartphones in 2021 than the previous year. However, clamshells are gaining momentum with handsets from TCL and Xiaomi and DSCC expects those to get to 14 million in 2022.
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