Samsung’s Kgomotso Mannya on the Fold8 strategy

Nafisa Akabor sat down with Kgomotso Mannya, Chief Marketing Officer at Samsung Africa for a closer look on the Z Fold8 range that was launched recently.

For years, foldable phones have had to answer the same question: are they genuinely useful, or are they simply an impressive piece of technology looking for a reason to exist?

Samsung believes its eighth-generation Galaxy Z Fold is finally answering that question, not by trying to make the foldable everything to everyone, but by changing how people use their phones.

Speaking to Recharged, Kgomotso Mannya, Chief Marketing Officer for Samsung Africa, says the company’s approach to foldables has been shaped by seven generations of learning about how people actually use them.

“We’ve been learning behaviours. We’ve been learning usages. We’ve been learning form factors,” says Mannya. “We think that right now in this eighth generation, we’ve managed to finally get it right.”

That learning is evident in the design of the Galaxy Z Fold8, which Samsung has moved towards a more natural phone shape when folded while offering a larger, more immersive experience when opened.

For me, that has been one of the biggest changes in using the Fold8. As an iPhone user, what surprised me was how quickly I changed my behaviour: reading more, working on the device and spending longer periods using it rather than simply dipping in and out of a conventional smartphone.

Mannya believes that change in behaviour could ultimately be more important than the technology itself.

MORE THAN A PHONE THAT FOLDS

Samsung has spent years trying to establish foldables as a category, but Mannya acknowledges that consumers still sometimes view them as a novelty.

“One of the hurdles that we constantly have to cross is that this is an actual device that happens to fold,” she says.

Rather than treating the Fold as a conventional smartphone with a folding screen added to it, Samsung’s latest approach appears to be about designing around what happens when the phone is opened.

Mannya describes the Fold8’s proportions as a “passport size” and says the form factor feels more intuitive, while still offering the pocketability expected from a phone.

It also appears to be changing how long people spend with the device.

“We’re finding dwell time is a lot more,” says Mannya, although she stresses that Samsung is still testing the data and does not yet have final figures to share on how much this has increased.

The larger unfolded screen creates a more immersive experience, she says, allowing users to remain on the device rather than putting it down and returning to it later.

That is something I have experienced with the Fold8. A conventional smartphone tends to encourage quick interactions: check something, reply to a message, put it down. With the Fold8, I find myself doing more on the screen at once and spending longer time on it. I use it as a second screen to browse shopping sites while watching TV as well.

That makes the question of whether the Fold8 is actually a new type of personal computing device more interesting.

SAMSUNG ISN’T KILLING THE TABLET

Despite the Fold’s growing productivity capabilities, Mannya isn’t predicting the death of the tablet or laptop. Samsung sees room for different devices to coexist.

“There’s room for a tablet. There’s room for a productivity-driven foldable,” she says. “And then there’s room for a new form factor.”

That may sound like an obvious corporate position, but Mannya points to education as one reason Samsung doesn’t see tablets disappearing from its ecosystem.

“I don’t think that we can do away with personal computing or tablets because those have got a right to live within the ecosystem,” she says.

So while the Fold may increasingly perform tasks that would traditionally have been done on a tablet, Samsung isn’t positioning it as a replacement for every other screen.

Instead, it is becoming another type of computing device; one that happens to fit into your pocket.

IT WILL REMAIN A NICHE PRODUCT 

The other interesting admission from Mannya is that Samsung doesn’t expect foldables to become mass-market devices in the same way as its more affordable Galaxy smartphones.

That’s largely because of the cost of producing the technology and the premium price attached to it.

“The Fold is a niche product and it always sits within the higher price bracket, so those that really love it, will go for it.”

Samsung experimented with making its Flip foldable more accessible through the Galaxy Z Flip7 FE, which Mannya says attracted younger consumers and early adopters. But the company doesn’t appear to see a similar strategy as the future of the Fold.

“It will always remain a niche product, because of the cost to produce it and the kind of technology that goes into it,” she says.

That doesn’t mean Samsung sees the Fold as having limited strategic importance.

Instead, it sees the premium foldable as a way of attracting consumers who might otherwise choose another operating system or smartphone brand.

THE BRAND SWITCH MATTERS

That makes Samsung’s comments about acquisition and churn quite revealing. Mannya says Samsung closely tracks both acquisition and churn, because winning a new customer is expensive, but so is losing an existing one.

She points to the company’s Galaxy A series as an example. Many younger consumers start with an A-series device and eventually move to another smartphone brand when they have more money to spend.

The Fold, she suggests, can play a role in preventing that churn by giving consumers a reason to stay within Samsung’s ecosystem as their needs and budgets change.

And it isn’t only existing Samsung users that Samsung wants. There are a fair amount of posts on social media indicating iPhone users have switched to the Z Fold8.

For Samsung, that kind of switching behaviour is significant because it suggests the years of investment in foldables may finally be doing more than generating headlines.

“It’s been our life’s work and our life’s journey over the past few years,” says Mannya.

THE NOVELTY STILL HAS A ROLE

There is another irony to Samsung’s strategy. While it wants consumers to see the Fold as a serious phone rather than a gimmick, the novelty of the form factor is still helping drive interest.

Mannya says the amount of buzz and conversation around the Fold8 has been a useful indicator for Samsung, alongside reviews, sales and customer feedback.

The simultaneous arrival of another major company’s foldable has also helped shine a bigger spotlight on the category, she says.

That competition could ultimately benefit Samsung.

After seven generations of refining the hardware, the challenge now isn’t simply convincing people that a phone can fold. It’s convincing them that once they’ve experienced one, they may not want to go back to a conventional phone.

And that, rather than the folding mechanism itself, could be Samsung’s most important achievement with the Fold8.

Don’t miss our Samsung Z Fold8 Ultra vs Z Fold8 comparison. The Z Fold8 currently retails for R40 999.

Disclaimer: Recharged attended the Z Fold8 global launch in London as a guest of Samsung SA and was supplied with a unit.