Huawei’s consumer business group CEO Richard Yu has made no secret of his ambition. He wants Huawei to be positioned as the world’s #1 smartphone maker, and the reality is, they’re not too far away from it. From relative obscurity to knocking Apple down to #3, Huawei’s sights are set on Samsung.
How (or if) Huawei will become number one remains to be seen, but Mr Yu has told welt.de in an interview that Huawei will be number one (or first) in user experience and innovation. It is in that light that he let something slip – earlier rumours of a foldable smartphone screen appear to be right.
Back in April, Scott wrote about a foldable phone from Huawei which we were to see in November. There wasn’t an awful lot to it, but now Richard Yu has confirmed it’s coming, and it’s not even a year away. Here’s an extract from welt‘s interview:
WORLD: Will there be other innovations besides Artificial Intelligence?
Yu: But of course. Why are you still using a computer? Probably because the smartphone display is too small for you. We will change that. It is conceivable that a display can be folded out.
WORLD: Will Huawei build such a smartphone?
Yu: We are already working on it. You will not even have to wait another year.
Rumours suggest that Huawei’s foldable screen will fold inward, rather than Samsung’s rumoured phone which appears to fold outward. Whichever way this goes, it’s an interesting move for smartphones – one that I’m not yet convinced is the right pivot.
But Huawei’s Richard Yu is right on one thing – smartphone displays are too small to take over completely from laptops and computers just yet, and simply making bigger slabs (e.g. tablets) isn’t the answer. If that’s so, then a foldable screen is a logical experiment, and it’s one I’m interested to see, whether it becomes popular with consumers or not.
