This doesn’t come as a surprise, though. We already know that Samsung is looking to double the sales of its upcoming foldable duo this year as compared to their respective predecessors last year. It is aiming to hit the 15 million mark, up from 7.1 million. This is despite the company lowering its overall smartphone sales target for 2022 by ten percent, down from 300 million to 270 million. Samsung, and all other smartphone vendors, are expecting sluggish demand due to various factors, including the global inflation crisis. Perhaps the Korean behemoth has already been hit by the slowdown. It reportedly has an unsold inventory of more than 50 million smartphones lying with distributors globally. The majority of those are Galaxy A series models, which are volume drivers for Samsung. However, the company is ready to sell fewer units of these volume drivers and risk losing the top spot if that means higher sales of the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 foldables. That’s because inflation impacts sales of low-cost phones more than flagship ones. On top of that, the new foldables will arrive on the market about a month before Apple’s iPhone 14 series. Samsung wants to compete with Apple in the premium segment. It hasn’t been able to topple the latter in this segment for years.
2022 Samsung foldables launch could be an offline event
Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked events have been an online-only affair for the past two years due to the pandemic. But the company may be planning an offline event to introduce its 2022 foldables. The event could take place in New York next month, The Korea Times reports. Rumors are that Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 will go official on August 10. If the rumored date and the launch being an offline event are true, we should see Samsung starting to send media invitations soon. It will be interesting to see if the Korean behemoth has any surprises in store.
