Samsung recently presented to the world its latest foldable smartphones – the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 – and it hopes to win over young consumers with the form factor.
More alarmingly, Samsung seems to be losing young customers to Apple in its home turf of South Korea. Even though Samsung is the dominant player in the country with an estimated market share of 63 percent, 60 percent of the young consumers aged between 18 and 29 own an iPhone and 41 percent of smartphone owners between the ages of 30 and 39 use an iPhone.
Samsung is definitely feeling the alarm bells ringing. In June, it opened a flagship retail store in Gangnam and branded it as a “playground for millennials and Gen Z.”
In a break from tradition, the company held the summer Unpacked event in South Korea instead of the US. According to a new Korea Times report, Samsung Electronics President Roh Tae-moon said that the marketing team advised the company to hold the event in South Korea. The admiration that the domestic market has shown for the foldable category was one of the reasons why the event was kept in Korea.
The Korea Times report says that Samsung is optimistic that the new bendable phones will help attract young consumers. Roh said that the company will analyze the apps and functions that are used most frequently by young users and will optimize those functions.
Roh is proud of the fact the company reached its last year’s goal of selling 10 million foldable smartphones and the company hopes to ship more than 30 million units this year. Research firms TrendForce and Counterpoint aren’t as optimistic and expect the company to sell around 15 million foldable phones. So even though Samsung’s new bendable phones will likely be one of the most popular foldable phones of the year, whether they will be the smashing hits Samsung wants them to be remains to be seen.
The company hopes that foldable phones will account for 20 percent of the overall sales globally. In South Korea, it aims for one of every three Galaxy phones sold to be foldable.
