Hinge supplier for Samsung's foldables is ready to start making Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 2 hinges [UPDATE]

Update: The original ZDNet Korea article has been updated and the references to Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 3 an Z Flip 2 have been removed. S-Connect will work with Samsung on future projects, but makes no statements about release time frames or exact models.

The original post from February 16 follows below.

S-Connect has been manufacturing hinges for Samsung’s foldable phones since last year and will soon start making the hinges for the next generation Galaxy Z phones. Today the company announced that it has received the go-ahead from Samsung.

It will start mass producing the hinges for the Galaxy Z Flip2 and Z Fold3 in the second quarter of this year. The production of the phones themselves should begin soon after that. This lines up with IceUnivere's report that the next-gen Z phones will arrive in July.

S-Connect expects that the foldable market will grow to 5.5 million units this year and that foldables will make up an increasingly larger fraction of phones sold. That will be great for the company, which forecasts that in 2023 hinges will make up 50% of its sales (up from just 17% this year).

In related news, S-Connect will start manufacturing components for the Galaxy Tab S8 and S8+ slates around the same time, so there are new high-end tablets on the way as well.

Galaxy Fold hinge manufactured by S-Connect • Pieces of Z Flip's hinge mechanism

By the way, the company is making metal parts for a variety of Samsung products – from the cases for Galaxy watches to the trademark camera bump of the S21 series.

Source (in Korean) | Via