The three folds into four. Now solid and waterproof, with countless customization possibilities and sold 500 euros cheaper than its predecessor, Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Flip 3 wants to convince young people to equip themselves with a foldable smartphone.
In support of an Opinion Way * survey according to which 47% of 25-34 year olds would consider purchasing a smartphone from the Galaxy Z range when renewing their smartphone, François Hernandez, vice-president of mobility at Samsung, explains his strategy to 20 minutes.
Why do you want to impose the foldable smartphone on the general public?
Samsung does not come up with the foldable to offer a cool gadget. Today, we consider that we have succeeded in achieving the vision we had of this type of product ten years ago, with a water resistant smartphone and a unique and impossible experience on standard formats. The idea is therefore first of all to offer new uses.
Concrete examples?
Our Galaxy Z Flip 3 can be used closed like a normal smartphone. As soon as we want to do productivity, creativity, we open it. We have reworked the interface to multitask with three different windows, to offer copy and paste from one application to another.
On the Galaxy Z Fold 3, its predecessor, you can also take advantage of the S-Pen stylus to take notes that are transcribed as if they had been typed on a keyboard.
You have the ambition to target young people with the foldable, but we are still talking about a smartphone sold for 1,059 euros, far from the average price of a smartphone in France, currently around 420 euros …
For young people, there is on the one hand purchasing power, on the other hand what they aspire to. The reality is that 24-35 year olds are considering switching to foldable when they make their next purchase. They know the price of the products. For our part, we bring innovation into the top of the range and then we trickle down to the rest of the range.
The foldable will not therefore remain a niche?
I rather think that eventually all smartphones will be foldable. The developers are starting to take hold of the concept en masse. In addition, we note that our foldable smartphones allow us to expand our sales, without those of our high-end Galaxy S21s having to suffer.
Your competitor Oppo presented the prototype of a rather convincing rollable smartphone. So, foldable or rollable the future of the smartphone?
We are working on a lot of things! But before that we have to make sure that the experience is good. We feel that there is an emulation on this market. That other actors are launching will confirm us in our vision.
* Survey conducted online from September 8 to September 10, 2021 with a sample of 1,016 respondents aged 18 and over.