Samsung calls its project a Galaxy X -  this is a Samsung folding phone and the Korea Tribune expects that there will be 100K of this phone shipping in late 2017. The concept is very simple - your phone can open like a book to a tablet like device, giving you a larger screen to read.  

Samsung will be able to do this thanks to the flexible displays we’ve seen last year.

LG has also patented a phone that unfolds to a tablet and has a few pictures to explain what it had in mind. The screen of the phone, obviously very flexible, is going to be wrapped around the whole phone. Once opened, it will unfold to a tablet size screen, roughly doubling the screen size of the phone, and making the device much more useful.

LG has some serious thoughts about such a device and the patents are very mich worked out in order to make the screen folding experience great. There is still no announcement when such a device will hit the market but it definitely won’t happen before at least the latter part of 2017.

Microsoft has also filed a few patents implicating it works on a similar device and Xiaomi is working in this direction too. The question is not if this will happen, it is when will this happen. It all implicates that it won’t happen in the first part of the 2017 as are mostly aware of how phones that are expected in the first half will look like. They are all moving toward minimal bezel direction.

The second part of the year might reveal more folding phones with much larger displays that we are used today. One can only wonder if this approach will cripple the battery life, but it will definitely bring a few interesting devices.

We do believe that Windows 10 devices might get a re-birth chance with this new folding concept but we expect a high adopting rate as mobile phone market is craving for innovations.