If you’ve set your sights on the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold as your next smartphone purchase, you might need to reset your expectations. That’s because Samsung isn’t actively trying to sell you one, according to a new report from the company’s Korean homeland.
Moon Joon-hyun of The Korea Herald says the quick sellouts on home soil aren’t necessarily down to fan demand, but due to the relatively minuscule quantities the phone-cum-tablet is available in. While the two order windows have seen stocks wiped out in less than five minutes, Moon reports the company only offered 3-4,000 units both times. In fact, he says, Samsung is only planning to offer 30,000 units globally at a max.
“That scale is negligible compared with Samsung’s mainstream foldables. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7, released earlier this year in July, recorded more than 1.04 million units in preorders alone, according to Samsung,” the reporter says.
“The contrast is deliberate. Unlike other flagship launches, Samsung did not distribute Galaxy Z TriFold units to media outlets or content creators for review loans. Industry sources describe the device as a tightly controlled, special-edition product, conceived primarily to “demonstrate market leadership and engineering capability” rather than to drive volume.”
The report goes on to say that Samsung would currently struggle to produce the devices en masse anyway. At least for now. The pair of hinges, the two custom-build OLED panels and “tighter assembly tolerances” would make pursuing high volume to be a risky and costly strategy.
Samsung would also struggle to make money on these devices, even though they’re the most expensive Samsung smartphone yet, retailing at the equivalent of $2,500/£1,850 in South Korea. Those custom made OLED panels don’t come cheap.
So we can probably think of the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold as a proof of concept that a very limited set of consumers can access. Perhaps a second generation in a year or two might be more widely available? By then, Samsung might have an iPhone Fold to compete with.
