Samsung just made a huge foldable announcement. No, not the Galaxy Z Fold 5 — even bigger than that. During an internal Samsung event, the company revealed that Apple is working on a 20-inch foldable device.
As reported by Patently Apple, at the SID Review held in Seoul, it was confirmed that Apple is working with Samsung and LG Display to develop this “foldable IT product project.” This correlates with a report towards the end of last year, and seemingly corroborates with a rumor that we could see a foldable MacBook in 2026.
Of course, it could be a foldable iPad. But with the size of this device (when in a half-folded mode like a laptop, the display half is 15.3-inches), suspicions across the rumor mill seem to point more towards this being an evolution of Apple's laptop line.
Folding Out for a Hero
During this event, Samsung didn’t go into any concrete details about Apple’s foldable, but Baek Sueng-in, executive director of Samsung, did talk about how Cupertino’s debut into this market is a “necessary condition” for foldables as a whole to succeed. And to that end, Samsung Display is working on some key issues with them to meet Apple’s high standards:
- Folding crack
- Foldable crease
- Compressive stress
- Display buckling
- Folding torque
- Pen drop issues
In short, Samsung has a lot of work to do on eliminating the crease on the inner screen, and improving the reliability issues caused by the device’s flexibility. Beyond that, Sueng-in went into another intriguing area too, which is the dispersal of internal components.
He noted that while “current laptops consist of the upper part of the screen and the lower part of the hardware and keyboard,” there are many companies that are interested in a “full display” foldable. Expect to see a more even distribution of internal hardware across the whole system — like the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold.
Outlook
There are a lot of obstacles, such as ensuring that glass materials over the likes of a transparent plastic film, and all the above Sueng-in mentioned above. But the future of the laptop seems to be clear — a foldable hybrid tablet-notebook.
Whatever your thoughts are on that (for me, it’s so long as we get a keyboard to place atop the bottom screen for proper laptop use), Apple entering this market will be a huge driver of adoption to this new form factor.
Don’t expect it anytime soon. As Sueng-in said, Samsung has worked “hard for several years'' on improving wrinkles in foldable displays, but they “haven’t completely disappeared.” I think The Wall Street Journal was on the money in saying 2026. Other rumors of Apple’s big screen foldable in 2024 seem a little optimistic.
