Sold on the Fold

Hi, this is Takashi in Tokyo and Yoolim in Singapore. We’re united in our newfound appreciation of foldable phones. But first...Three things [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi, this is Takashi in Tokyo and Yoolim in Singapore. We’re united in our newfound appreciation of foldable phones. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Apple Watch X [overhaul is in the works]( • Mastercard will [buy a stake in MTX’s fintech unit]( • Zuckerberg cast doubt on [cage match with Musk]( Doubling down on folding A taxi driver in Seoul last month gave the best demonstration of a foldable smartphone we’ve yet seen. He had a [Samsung Galaxy Fold](, open like a book, perched next to his steering wheel with three apps on its large screen. One half showed a map, and the other had KakaoTalk and a stock tracking app sharing space. At one point, when he took a call on his wireless buds, he was doing four-way multitasking with his hands free. As a passenger in his car, this was worrisome, but the gadget hound in me was intrigued. Versatility is the defining appeal of foldables. But it’s something you only truly appreciate once you spend quality time with these devices. One of us just bought Samsung’s latest, the Galaxy Z Fold 5, and the other got a Google Pixel Fold, as Japan is one of the few countries where it’s on sale. What we’ve found is a series of productivity and quality-of-life advantages that regular slab phones just can’t match and that allow us to look past the shortcomings foldables still have. A quick recap: Each of these phones costs $1,800, and, in the event of some calamity, replacing the Pixel Fold’s inner display would cost you about the same as a new iPhone 14 Pro. Additionally, the Pixel Fold with a case on is about the same weight as Apple Inc.’s iPad Mini. So why are we stoked? Well, a foldable gives you the luxury of a much larger on-screen keyboard, the space to use Adobe Inc.’s Lightroom without it feeling cramped and the side-by-side multitasking that makes flipping between apps occasional rather than constant. And unlike a laptop or tablet, which can do similar things, a foldable slips into any pocket that would fit a smartphone. A killer feature for journalists tuning into streamed press conferences: You can run a video on one half of the screen and a real-time transcription app on the other. Neither of us fits into the Gen Z demographic that Samsung Electronics Co. is trying to woo with its advertising campaign around the Galaxy Z Flip, but that hasn’t stopped us from appreciating what the product has to offer. The experience is reminiscent of the early iPhone days, when the Apple gadget proved itself to be the device people never knew they needed. Other owners of foldable phones who we’ve spoken to have expressed a similar sentiment. Research firm IDC expects worldwide shipments of foldable phones to increase by more than 50% to 21 million units in 2023 and to then approach 50 million units by 2027. That’ll still be only a small slice of the billion-units-per-year smartphone pie, but it’ll be a significant one. Phone makers, Apple notwithstanding, welcome the excitement. They’re charging more for these devices, yielding higher profit margins, and there’s more room to differentiate through quality and durability. Just check out [this epic comparison]( of Samsung’s Flip phone against its Motorola rival. For us, foldables have earned their place alongside — and in some circumstances, in place of — conventional smartphones and tablets. —[Takashi Mochizuki](mailto:tmochizuki15@bloomberg.net) and [Yoolim Lee](mailto:yoolim@bloomberg.net) The big story People on TikTok are pretending to be robots. In return, viewers are sending them virtual corn and other digital gifts. 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