Huawei wants to launch foldable phone under 1000 euros

Highlights: Huawei executive says the company wants to make foldable phones priced at around 1000 euros. He claimed that Huawei will overtake Samsung in 5G by next year. About espionage allegations, he said that the move is politically motivated.   Foldable phones have now become a reality, and apart from weeding out the technology limitations, OEMs will now face the mountainous task of making these phones affordable. Huawei seems to be thinking on these lines and is looking forward to launching a foldable phone under 1000 euros (approx Rs 79,000). Currently, there are only a few companies that have commercially launched foldable devices till now and Huawei’s Mate X is one of those devices. The device costs a whopping 2,300 euros (approx Rs 1.80 lakh). “The components, especially the display and the hinge, are very expensive. At the beginning, the smartphone is mainly sold as a premium product. But later it will also push into the middle price segment. Over time, we will be able to push it below 1000 euros. For that we need one to two years. Later maybe in the range of 500 euros. That will take longer. Of course it also depends on how well the device is accepted. We can accelerate mass production at any time,” German news website WELT quoted Yu as saying. Samsung is Huawei’s nearest competitor when it comes to the foldable phones. The Samsung Galaxy Fold is priced at 1,760 euros ($1980 or Rs 1.38 lakh). When asked about the changes that 5G will bring to the smartphone industry, Yu said that there would be big shifts within the industry through 5G. “2G was still dominated by companies like Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson. In the 3G world, Nokia was the dominant smartphone producer. At 4G, it was Apple, Samsung and Huawei. At 5G, Huawei will be the market leader (by next year at the latest),” he noted. About espionage charges, the executive said “that's nonsense because it's not technically possible.” He also assured that the company would not let that happen because they have high safety standards in their hardware and software. On being sidelined by several western countries in terms of leveraging Huawei’s 5G network infrastructure, Yu said that the procedure had political reasons and there were no technical reason for this. “Our technology has no back door that would compromise the safety of the networks. This charge is made mainly by the US government. But that should have quite different reasons. We can not sell our smartphones in the US. That's a consequence. But this has no impact on our smartphone business in the rest of the world. Our market shares are growing fast. The Android software on our devices even comes from Google, an American company. We work with many US companies, including Qualcomm and Microsoft,” he was quoted as saying. Related Read: Galaxy Fold 2? Samsung patents foldable phone that bends outwards

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