Samsung to showcase new Galaxy foldables in Seoul in July

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest smartphone maker, will showcase new foldable smartphones in the Galaxy Z series next month for the first time in South Korea, according to the company on Wednesday.

The South Korean company is slated to release the fifth-generation Samsung Galaxy Z series of foldables during the Galaxy Unpacked 2023 in Seoul in the last week of July. It unveiled the industry’s first foldable smartphones in 2019.

It is the first time for Samsung to hold the biannual event for domestic customers, known as early adopters of new technologies, as South Korea has emerged as a cultural hub from music to film.

Samsung is understood to be bringing forward the second-half event by two weeks to the last week of July. No further details have yet been disclosed.

The Galaxy Unpacked event was first held in Las Vegas in March 2010. Since then, it has taken place in major cities such as New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin and Barcelona.

Last year, Samsung unveiled two types of its fourth-generation foldable phones – new editions to its high-end line of Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip phones.

Following the release of the fourth-generation Galaxy Z foldables in August 2022, TM Roh, Samsung’s mobile experience (MX) division head said the company would make foldable smartphones its mainstream products in the high-end segment, accounting for more than half of its global smartphone shipments by 2025.

Amid the cloudy outlook for the smartphone market, only foldable models are expected to maintain growth this year.

TrendForce, a Taiwanese industry tracker, said in a recent report that foldable phone shipments will likely jump 55% on-year to 19.8 million units worldwide in 2023. It is an upward revision to its previous forecast released earlier this year.

This year, smartphone shipments worldwide will likely fall short of 1.2 billion units, fewer than last year’s shipments, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

Write to Jeong-Soo Hwang at hjs@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.