A few days ago in Seoul, South Korea, Samsung presented the latest smartphone masterpiece: I won’t stay here to tell you about a new mobile phone (here the report by Pierluigi Pisa) but two things should be noted. The first is that it costs a good two thousand euros and the second is that it is a practically perfect folding. When the first leaflets came out, in 2019, they seemed like a miracle – the screen that folds in two like a sheet of paper – but technically there were several things that were not working and only since last year have the leaflets really folded without problems.
In short, it is a well-established technology yet last year, out of every thousand smartphones sold, only one was a foldable. Why i foldable, that’s what they’re called in English, aren’t they rampant? The same thing happened a few years ago to films – and therefore to televisions – in 3D; and more recently to the metaverse, or virtual reality. Even in those cases, the first models had several defects, but then the technology evolved and yet consumers remained cold. This happens because it is not enough for a technology to be available to make it a successful product. In fact, they need to be verified three conditions:
the first is that the innovation actually constitutes a life improvement of people; the second is that adopting it is easy and comfortable; the third is that it is economically affordablei.e. that it has a relatively low price.
In all of this plays a key role willingness to change lifestyle. For example, video calling technology had existed for many years yet very few used it, video calling was considered an intrusion into one’s privacy. It took the pandemic to change its perception and value the improvement in our lives. Maybe it will be like this for leaflets too.
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