It seems like the Samsung Galaxy Fold has been delayed again as a company official has apparently said that no media event is on the calendar right now. The report has come straight from the conglomerate’s home ground of South Korea, and the spokesman further said that nothing has been planned since the April delay.
Keep in mind that these remarks were likely made regarding the press briefing of the Galaxy Fold and not about the device itself as the chaebol has reportedly fixed the flaws that led to the initial delay. Samsung’s mobile boss DJ Koh said last month that the issues that caused the problems have been reviewed and the company will decide on a new launch date soon. Later on, four days ago, a Samsung spokesperson said that a new date will be announced in the coming weeks.
The company was also said to be testing the Galaxy Fold with carriers in South Korea last month. So, while no exact date launch was confirmed, it was assumed that the revised hardware will be here by July. However, with no media briefing in sight, it is unlikely that the phone will be relaunched anytime soon.
We are half way into June and assuming that Samsung decides to hold a press conference towards the end of July, there is still plenty of time left to organize an event. After all, the major hurdle was getting to the bottom of the issues and remedying them, and with that out of the way, something insignificant like event management should ideally not hold back Samsung from releasing the device.
Meanwhile, retail and carrier partners have begun distancing themselves from the Galaxy Fold, presumably because of the company’s inability to come up with a launch date. AT&T has started canceling preorders for the phone and Best Buy did the same in May.
Huawei’s Mate X, which would be Galaxy Fold’s biggest competitor, has also been delayed. The company had initially planned to release the device in June but now the launch date has been pushed to September. Huawei says that it wants to be on the safe side by conducting some more tests so that its first foldable phone doesn’t meet the same fate as Galaxy Fold.
Now, this admission is rather interesting, as back when Samsung decided to pause the release of the Galaxy Fold, Huawei appeared confident and said that it would stick to its original plan. So, there is a possibility that with everything going on, the Chinese company has decided to not go ahead with the release.
Since the Mate X was announced before Huawei was put on the entity list by the U.S. government, it will come with Android and all of Google’s apps and services. However, the phone will not be eligible for updates in the future, which means users will be stuck with the current operating system.
Given that the Mate X carries a hefty price tag, and is something of a gamble, as it is the company’s first foldable smartphone after all, consumers will most likely be a little skeptical about buying it. It is already being reported that sales of Huawei phones have gone down in certain countries, and the company has apparently also downgraded its sales estimates. So, this is not really the best of times to release the Mate X.
There is a small possibility that Samsung got this scoop earlier on and with its biggest competitor out of the way temporarily, it decided to buy itself some more time and further improve the Galaxy Fold. However, all this uncertainty is unlikely to bode well with consumers and will only shake their confidence in the form factor that the industry was counting on to boost sales.