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Journalism of Courage
Samsung recently unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold6 Special Edition, the company’s second book-style foldable this year. Now, the tech giant has confirmed that it has no plans to launch a cheaper Galaxy Z Fold smartphone.
According to a machine-translated report by the South Korean publication SisaJournal, Samsung says that “there are currently no plans to release an entry-level model with a significantly reduced price.”
This debunks previous rumours which hinted that Samsung was working on a cheaper Galaxy Z Fold, which might sport a much cheaper flexible OLED panel bezel and chipset, bringing the effective price down to somewhere around $80 (approx. Rs 67,000).
While Samsung’s latest book-style foldable phone is more of an iterative upgrade and offers great value for money, compared to some Chinese phone manufacturers like OnePlus, the company is lacking in terms of hardware. A Samsung official also reportedly explained the Galaxy Z Fold series was released to expand the range of choices available to users instead of being sold as a premium product.
Since Huawei unveiled its new foldable phone earlier this year, a Counterpoint Research report suggests that the Chinese smartphone maker has managed to stay on top in the global foldable phone market with a 35 per cent market share compared to Samsung and Honor’s 23 per cent and 12 per cent market share in the segment.
In July, Samsung told 9to5Google that most of its foldable customers are coming from the previous generation and that there are not many new people transitioning to the foldable form factor. When Samsung unveiled the first generation Galaxy Z Fold, it was expected that the price of foldable phones would see a drop in the coming years. Clearly, that isn’t the case as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 Special Edition is $100 more expensive than the normal version.
To give you a quick recap, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 Special Edition looks and feels similar to the normal variant, but is slightly lighter and thinner and sports a 200MP primary camera. It will be available starting October 25 in South Korea, but it looks like Samsung is not keen on bringing it to the global market.
