Samsung reportedly plans to enter a new foldable market next year with a larger display

According to The Elec (via NotebookCheck), next year Samsung is planning on taking its foldable capabilities to another product. By that, we mean that the company will offer a new foldable device that will sport a 17.3-inch OLED panel that can be folded down to a 13.3-inch display for a laptop device. The report from Korea's The Elec cites research firm Omdia as the source for the part of the report that says the larger screen was supposed to be introduced this year but was postponed for unknown reasons.

Had Samsung released the 17.3-inch screen this year, it would have competed in the marketplace with other foldable laptops such as the Asus ZenBook 17 Fold laptop that bends from a 17-inch display down to 12.6 inches. The $3,500 computer uses a screen produced by China's BOE. Only 10,000 such panels were ordered by Asus as the foldable laptop market is still in its infancy. Unfortunately for Asus, Samsung sources its foldable displays from itself allowing it to have a huge advantage when it prices its foldable laptop computer next year.

HP is also working on a foldable laptop that uses an LG foldable display. Like Asus, HP reportedly ordered only 10,000 foldable OLED panels from LG as it too is being cautious in a new market. The device that HP is working on is alleged to fold from a 17-inch screen down to an 11-inch display. And Lenovo has unveiled the ThinkPad X1 Fold Gen 2 which carries a 16.3-inch display that folds down to a 12-inch screen when closed.

Omdia predicts that just 4% of the displays made for laptops next year will be OLED and a small fraction of those will be foldable. Samsung is expected to produce 8.5 million OLED laptop displays next year compared to the approximately 5.9 million such panels it produced this year. That would work out to a 44% increase in year-over-year production of such panels. This is a rapidly growing business; as recently as 2020, Samsung made less than one million OLED displays for laptops.

In 2023, Samsung is also expected to release the next-generation models of its Galaxy Z foldable phone line. That would include the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 and the clamshell Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5.