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Samsung will unveil its latest foldables on August 10

The days of the Galaxy Note Unpacked events are sadly gone, but Samsung’s foldables are more than happy to fill a phablet-sized hole in the company’s annual release schedule. Over the last couple of years, the company has made good on its promise to fully commit to the form factor, and we expect to see the latest additions to the Fold and Flip lines arrive in a matter of weeks.
Samsung this morning dropped an official invite for its late-summer Unpacked event, confirming an August 10 date for the virtual event. This is a Samsung event, so that means the big announcements have been leaked in part — or in full — over the last several weeks. As anticipated, the big news centers around the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4, along with Galaxy Watch 5.
Image Credits: Samsung
Both foldables are said to include the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip, along with some new color options. The new Galaxy Watch, meanwhile, represents Samsung’s latest Wear OS partnership. That one’s certainly worth keeping an eye on, as Google begins a newfound push for the wearable operating system, ahead of the fall Pixel Watch launch.
Meanwhile, Samsung’s super early pre-show product reserve is going even earlier this year, featuring the following discounts if you want to buy the mystery products (jkjkjkjk), site unseen:

$200 credit toward Galaxy phone, watch and buds bundle

$150 credit toward Galaxy phone and watch bundle

$130 credit toward Galaxy phone and buds bundle

$80 credit toward Galaxy watch and buds bundle

$100 credit to use on Samsung.com toward eligible products when you reserve a Galaxy phone

$50 credit to use on Samsung.com toward eligible products when you reserve a Galaxy watch

$30 credit to use on Samsung.com toward eligible products when you reserve Galaxy buds

All said, it should make for an interesting event, and a nice jolt of news amidst the late-summer hardware doldrums. The event kicks off at 9AM ET/6AM PT August 10. We’ll be there (virtually).
Samsung will unveil its latest foldables on August 10

Smartphone shipments dropped 9% in Q2

Bad news about smartphone shipments has become the norm, rather than the exception, in recent years. The trend pre-dates the pandemic, but has only accelerated during the pandemic, thanks to various economic and supply chain impacts. Even so, a high single-digit drop warrants examination and some difficult questions around the industry’s health.
New figures out this morning from Canalys show a 9% year-over-year drop for global smartphone shipments in Q2. The culprits are, well, pretty much everything you’ve been hearing about for the last couple of years.
Says analyst Runar Bjørhovde:
Vendors were forced to review their tactics in Q2 as the outlook for the smartphone market became more cautious. Economic headwinds, sluggish demand and inventory pileup have resulted in vendors rapidly reassessing their portfolio strategies for the rest of 2022. The oversupplied mid-range is an exposed segment for vendors to focus on adjusting new launches, as budget-constrained consumers shift their device purchases toward the lower end.
Image Credits: Canalys
Consumers have broadly slowed down their upgrade cycles, as phones have gotten better and more robust. The phones themselves have grown more expensive in the process, adding an air of consumer caution amid economic uncertainty, including unemployment and inflation. Add to that chip shortages and supply chain bottlenecks, and you’ve got a recipe for an industry that has crashed back down to earth.
Given all of the above, it ought to come as little surprise that low-end and mid-tier devices have been driving what purchases remain. Most notable is Samsung’s A-series, which helped the company retain the top spot and grow its overall market share from 18 to 21%. Apple and Xiaomi effectively swapped market shares with 17 and 14% this quarter, as Apple took second place, propelled by demand for the iPhone 13.
Along with Xiaomi, fellow Chinese handset makers Oppo and Vivo also experienced market share drops for the quarter, at 1% apiece.
Smartphone shipments dropped 9% in Q2

Samsung reportedly cutting smartphone production by 30M

All is not well in smartphone land. The industry was headed for a slowdown well before SARS-CoV-2 entered the picture. The glory days of expanding markets and bi-annual upgrades are seemingly at an end, and things have only been exacerbated by two years of financial hardships and supply chain constraints.
For all these reasons, it’s not surprising that manufacturers are pulling back on manufacturing. A new report from South Korea’s Maeil Business News has the world’s leading smartphone maker ramping production down by 30 million units for 2022. The news comes as sales are further hampered by the conflict in Ukraine. In March, the company followed fellow tech giants Microsoft and Apple by suspending sales in Russia.
Apple, too, has been feeling the pain. Recent Bloomberg reports noted that the iPhone maker is throttling plans to manufacture an additional 20 million phones in 2022. Instead, its numbers are reportedly going to remain flat from 2021. Those reports follow several quarters of iPhone sales that had managed to buck many of the industry’s macro trends, but the company might be coming back down to Earth, even with the imminent arrival of the iPhone 14.
It’s a perfect storm of industry and global factors that have gotten us to this place. It’s not panic time for the larger manufactures — they’ll almost certainly come out of the dip unscathed. But there are broader questions that remain about the industry going forward. Biggest of all is whether this is a lull following a decade of explosive smartphones sales, or whether not even the arrival of new technologies like foldable screens will kickstart a return to the mobile golden age.
Samsung declined to comment on the reports.
Samsung reportedly cutting smartphone production by 30M

Daily Crunch: Samsung unveils Galaxy S21 line

Samsung lowers prices with its latest Galaxy S phones, Google completes its Fitbit acquisition and Beyond Meat is coming to Taco Bell. This is your Daily Crunch for January 14, 2021.
The big story: Samsung unveils Galaxy S21 line
Samsung’s new line of phones includes the S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra, priced at $799, $999 and $1,119 respectively, an across-the-board price cut of $200. Brian Heater writes that the Ultra, in particular, “has one very important trick up its sleeve” — namely compatibility with the S Pen.

All three phones are available for pre-order now and start shipping on January 29.
In addition, Samsung announced the Galaxy Buds Pro, which cost $199 and come with a stated five hours of battery life. And it’s launching a Bluetooth locator, dubbed the Galaxy SmartTag.
The tech giants
Google’s Fitbit acquisition is official — This follows regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the pond.
Amazon’s Ring Neighbors app exposed users’ precise locations and home addresses — The bug made it possible to retrieve the location data on users who posted to the app.
Beyond Meat shares soar after inking deal with Taco Bell on new menu items — Taco Bell announced that it would work with Beyond Meat to come up with new menu items due to be tested in the next year.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Medium acquires social book reading app Glose — Glose has been building iOS, Android and web apps that let you buy, download and read books on your devices.
Tiger Global is raising a new $3.75B venture fund, one year after closing its last — Despite being named Tiger Private Investment Partners XIV, this is actually the firm’s thirteenth fund.
Carbyne raises $25M for a next-generation platform to improve emergency 911 responses — The Israeli startup aims to help emergency services get more complete information about callers, and to provide additional telemedicine services.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
Five consumer hardware VCs share their 2021 investment strategies — Investors are generally bullish on at-home fitness startups.
Poshmark prices IPO above range as public markets continue to YOLO startups — This is the late-2020, early-2021 IPO market in action.
Twelve ‘flexible VCs’ who operate where equity meets revenue share — Founders seeking non-dilutive funding: start here.
(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
Tech and health companies including Microsoft and Salesforce team up on digital COVID-19 vaccination records — The so-called “Vaccination Credential Initiative” includes a range of big-name companies from both the healthcare and tech industries.
2020 was one of the warmest years in history and indicates mounting risks of climate change — 2020 either edged out or came in just behind 2016 as the warmest year in recorded history, according to data from U.S. government agencies.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Daily Crunch: Samsung unveils Galaxy S21 line

Samsung’s next Unpacked event is January 14

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Samsung’s next flagship is set to debut January 14. The company just confirmed earlier rumors surrounding the date for its next Unpacked event (virtually, of course). This one sports the name, “Welcome to the Everyday Epic.”
“Over the past year, mobile technology has taken center stage in everyday life as people are working remotely and spending more time at home,” the company writes. “The accelerated transition to a mobile-first world brings with it the need for devices that can transform everyday life into an extraordinary experience.”
The event’s timing is an interesting artifact of 2021’s wacky show scheduling, with the COVID-19 pandemic still very much being front of mind. Past Unpackeds were generally timed around Mobile World Congress. That show has been delayed until the summer, however, in hopes of returning to an in-person event. So Samsung has opted to kickstart sales a month or so earlier this year.

In fact, the event is a mere days after CES. Gone are the days a gadget journalist could take a few days to decompress after the year’s biggest hardware show. It also, perhaps, doesn’t bode well for Samsung’s announcements during CES itself (though the electronics giant has more than enough divisions to keep its presence at the show interesting).

Another odd change this year is the fact that you can already reserve the S21, sight unseen. There’s little doubt it will be a solid phone, though there are plenty of questions around how the company will up the ante in the era of flagging smartphone sales. The leaks so far have been kind of underwhelming, though Samsung’s usually got a couple of fun surprises up its sleeve.
We’ve already seen enough of the Galaxy Buds Pro that they don’t qualify as a surprise, exactly. But the company has a solid enough track record with earbuds that there’s reason to be excited. The AirPods Pro competitors are are said to be priced at a reasonable $199.

Samsung hasn’t announced the Galaxy S21 yet, but you can already reserve one

Samsung’s next Unpacked event is January 14