Arch-rival of Apple’s might come up with a foldable tablet first, now that the iPad has been delayed
It’s only now that Apple has apparently decided to launch a foldable phone and, as we reported, Tim Cook and co. are preparing to enter the foldable phone market next year with the first foldable iPhone. It’s set to launch alongside the iPhone 18 series. Meanwhile, plans for a massive foldable iPad have been postponed due to high costs and limited demand.
Virtually all major brands have been manufacturing foldable phones for years, but foldable tablets is not a well-explored territory. There’s the all-screen 13-inch Huawei MateBook Fold that expands into an 18-inch display, but that’s a laptop, technically speaking:
That’s a large foldable device, but it’s not a tablet. | Image by Huawei
Apple could’ve pioneered the foldable tablet market: imagine an iPad mini model that’s even more pocketable-friendly than the non-folding one. The iPad mini, a capable, but also compact and lightweight slate, is easy to carry and use on the go: it’s no surprise that it is so popular. Now imagine how its versatility reaches a whole new level if the slate folds in two and fits in your pants’ pocket.
Or, picture this, a foldable iPad Air model: it’s powerful enough to get the job done but light enough to carry without breaking a sweat. It’s got all the cool features without the scary price tag, so if it could fold, it’d be even better.
Now, however, a laconic rumor from the Far East has it that Huawei might be on the quest of coming up with a foldable tablet. Virtually nothing is known about it, no specs are listed, but I won’t be surprised if in some months time, we’re talking about the just-unveiled Huawei foldable tablet.
Foldable tablets look promising to me, because they combine the benefits of a large, immersive display with the convenience of a compact, pocket-sized device that easily fits into bags or even larger pockets. This makes them ideal for people who want the flexibility to switch between watching videos, browsing the web, working on documents, and multitasking – I’m often in that very situation.
So, Apple will probably not be the first to make a foldable tablet. So what? I’m sure that US customers will not be thrilled about Huawei’s foldable tablet, even if it arrives months (or even years) earlier. It just so happens that many people just stick with Apple, no matter how long Cupertino takes to make a move. Before it was heavily sanctioned, Huawei was getting really popular across – some might say that it was a threat to the iPhone dominance.
