Foldable smartphones are all the rage right now. Everyone wants in. Indeed, almost everyone has a foldable smartphone either out in the market or under development in a certain corner of the world.
Among those with their foldable smartphones still under development is smartphone brand Tecno, the lead brand in the Chinese technology conglomerate Transsion’s fold.
Last month, Tecno, through its Phantom sub-brand, showcased its foldable smartphone plans with the Phantom V Vision, a concept smartphone.
Now, as you may already know, concept smartphones (and even cars) are meant to stay as just that: concepts. They are early prototypes and examples of what companies can do and are mostly made for show and to gather critical design and usability feedback that is factored should the company proceed to take the concept product from being just a concept to being a full product that consumers can one day lay their hands on. That is what vivo does with the Apex lineup of concept devices.
Word on the grapevine is that the company is gearing to release the device officially, sometime later this month, most like at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
A device that closely resembles the Tecno Phantom V Vision has been pictured out in the wild (see the source link below) and we may be on the verge of witnessing Tecno go after the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, vivo and others with its own foldable.
Tecno just recently launched its most feature-packed smartphone, yet, the Phantom X2 Pro 5G with a retractable portrait camera and it appears that the company is not yet done trying to push its own boundaries of innovation, this time with foldables.
Market research firm TrendForce projects that foldable smartphone shipments will rise to 18.5 million units this year, up from the 12.8 million units estimated to have been shipped last year.
According to the firm, Samsung is the market leader in the foldable smartphones segment with 82% market share in 2022, numbers that are not too far off from what Samsung itself reported in August last year.
