The mobile industry had a brutal 2018,
with the first decline that the smartphone market has ever
seen.
But attendees here in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress
have arrived with a new spirit of enthusiasm, bolstered
by the roll out of new 5G networks
and the introduction of a brand new innovation in smartphones
- folding devices.
The first company to unveil this new folding screen technology
was a start-up called Royale.
But just a few weeks later, we've
seen two of the three biggest smartphone companies
in the world, Huawei and Samsung,
unveil their own versions of this breakthrough
new technology.
Foldable is obviously a new era of us bringing technology
to life in a very different way.
I think the market needs it.
I think people have become slightly apathetic
about the same form factor over the same of a number of years.
So this is really exciting.
A new era of how we interact with technology.
The foldable phone obviously offers a completely new
experience.
Once you open it up, you've got a very large screen.
And maybe even, in time, it might replace the need
to have a tablet.
Who knows?
But again, the first generation of many to come, no doubt.
For now, a lot of that excitement
about foldable phones has been locked
behind a case like this one, because while Samsung
and Huawei have put plenty of advertising and marketing
behind their new folding devices,
they're not letting most attendees here in Barcelona
actually touch one.
That has raised questions not only
about the usability and the readiness of the technology,
but also how they can possibly expect
to persuade people to pay as much as $2,000
or even more to get hold of one of the first generations
of these new devices.
We need a bit more storytelling.
We need to bit more companies really showing us
what the opportunity is.
From a price point perspective, you're
hitting a very specific market, right?
It's either first adopters of technology or people
that want a status symbol.
And I think that's where you're going.
Mass market consumers don't have either the means
or the willingness to spend that much money
and then figure out what they're going to do with it.
- snap to your face.
OK.
For $1,000 more than Huawei's folding smartphone,
you could buy Microsoft's new HoloLens
2, which some people in the industry
believe is a more ambitious vision
for the future of computing.
It's a little bit like the crystal maze.
So I have another dotted line with a hand that's showing me
that I want to pop it in here.
Congratulations.
Guide complete.
I can now build the jet engine, right?
- You qualified.
For now, Microsoft is only pitching
the HoloLens at industrial and corporate customers
rather than regular consumers.
But equally, it could be many years
before a folding smartphone is affordable enough
for the mass market.
After years of smartphone copycats
and a fixation on a boring black rectangle, at least
this year at Mobile World Congress,
there is a new spirit of experimentation in the air.