Huawei delays launch of its foldable Mate X phone from June to September, says it is doing extra tests after Samsung's troubles with the Galaxy Fold
KEY POINTS — The company had initially targeted a June launch, but a spokesperson told CNBC, that it was doing extra tests …
Context & Ripple Effects
Huawei unveiled the $2,600 Mate X foldable 5G phone in February with a mid-2019 target, positioning it as the first real rival to Samsung's Galaxy Fold. Then Samsung's April rollout collapsed amid screen failures — sources reported the Galaxy Fold rollout slipping past its Friday debut and media events in Hong Kong and Shanghai being postponed.
Huawei pushing its own launch from June to September for 'extra tests' reads as a direct lesson drawn from Samsung's public stumble: in foldables' first commercial year, shipping early is a bigger risk than shipping late.
First-order effects
- Huawei's earliest Mate X customers and reviewers now wait until September, and the company avoids exposing an untested hinge design to the kind of review-unit failures that forced Samsung off the market in April.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's reworked Galaxy Fold — announced in July as 'improved' to protect the screen and slated for September — now lands in the same month as the Mate X, turning autumn 2019 into a head-to-head credibility contest between the only two major foldables.
Third-order effects
- Extended pre-launch testing appears to be becoming the standard gate for the form factor itself: years later, Apple's foldable iPhone is reportedly stuck in a longer-than-expected test phase that could delay mass production, per Nikkei's reporting on Apple's foldable troubles.
The trend: Foldable phones are maturing on a schedule set by durability testing rather than marketing calendars, with each vendor's launch slips compressing releases into the same late-year window.