To drive pricing of foldables
Samsung is planning to use three battery suppliers for its new foldable smartphones launching next month.
The company is planning to use batches made by Samsung SDI, LG Energy Solution and ATL, sources said.
Samsung had used only Samsung SDI as a supplier for its first foldable smartphone Galaxy Fold.
But it added ATL in subsequent generations as a secondary supplier and has added LG Energy Solution for the first time this year.
While foldable smartphones take only a small portion of the global smartphone market, it is a sector dominated by Samsung and where it offers its best technologies.
According to Omdia, 9 million foldable smartphones were shipped last year will 86.6% of them being from Samsung.
Meanwhile, a total of 1.5 billion smartphones were shipped last year, showing how small the foldable smartphone market is.
One of Samsung’s main aims from prior generations up to its latest foldable smartphone has been to cut costs to bring the prices down.
This is one of the reasons why it is adding more suppliers of batteries which will drive their unit prices down.
While batteries only account for around 5% of the cost of a conventional battery, foldable smartphones use two batteries per unit, which increases cost.
Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4 will be unveiled at Samsung’s Unpacked event on August 10.
