Huawei and Samsung reportedly launching foldable tablets onto the market soon, while Oppo and Vivo are pulling out

For years, the two foldable pioneers Samsung and Huawei have practically limited themselves to two form factors. On the one hand, there are the tablet-like foldables with a 7 to 8 inch diagonal in smartphone format, and on the other hand, the much more popular foldable smartphones, which, when folded, shrink to about half the size of a conventional smartphone. Other form factors will be on show at trade fairs such as the upcoming Mobile World Congress and Display Week, although they have not yet made it past the prototype stage.

Huawei expected to launch a foldable 10-inch tablet in H1 2024

According to a report from South Korea, this will soon change. Rumors about a soon-to-be-launched foldable 17-inch tablet from Samsung or a "tri-fold design" (seen here as part of Display Week 2022) have been circulating since 2022 and have never manifested on the market thus far. But now, Huawei is making the first move, at least based on industry reports from China and South Korea. Accordingly, Huawei plans to bring a double-folding smartphone onto the market in the first half of the year, which will offer a display diagonal of around 10 inches when fully unfolded.

Huawei hopes to make it back to the top of the smartphone sector, at least in China, according to the report. In doing so, Huawei may also shake up a tablet market dominated by Apple's iPads and Samsung's Galaxy Tabs and the Samsung-Apple duopoly in the rest of the world, at least according to one industry representative interviewed by South Korean industry newspaper Hankyung. It will of course be exciting to see how Samsung reacts to this new threat from China.

Samsung reacts, Oppo and Vivo pull out

According to leaker and tech observer @Tech_Reve, Samsung's roll-out smartphones are ready for mass production, and the mass production of one of the two tri-fold concepts (Flex G or Flex S) is also being considered. Samsung does not intend on passing up the chance of being the world's first manufacturer of such a foldable once again, according to the leaker on X (formerly Twitter, see below). Whether the report is correct in saying that Oppo and Vivo have allegedly decided to completely withdraw from the foldable sector remains to be seen.