Apple Wants To Extend Its Foldable Lineup To The iPad, Claim Supply Chain Sources, But No Word On Possible Launch

wccftech.com:

Apple has plans to introduce a whole new family of foldable devices, with one of them being an iPad, according to the latest report. However, there have been previous reports where the company was said to be working on products with similar form factors. Just like on earlier occasions, a solid launch timeline was not provided.

While there is limited information regarding the foldable iPad, a paywalled report published on DigiTimes and spotted by MacRumors states that ‘Apple, who is rumored to have been working on foldable smartphones for several years, reportedly is considering extending the effort to the tablet sector.’ It takes around several hours for DigiTimes to make the entire report viewable to its audience, so we will see what other valuable information we can get from it.

It should be mentioned that Apple still uses mini-LED technology for its iPad Pro series and for any tablet to turn into a foldable, it needs to rely on flexible OLED panels as these possess the level of tolerance to be bent without compromising the structural integrity. At the earliest, the California-based is reportedly introducing OLED iPad Pro models next year, so it is likely that we will not see the foldable variants for at least a few years.

Even Samsung is yet to commercially introduce a foldable tablet to the market, so it is unlikely that Apple will launch a foldable iPad before its Korean competitor. Also, the firm highly values the design language of its products, so it will have to work on a way in which the crease on the foldable iPad is virtually invisible to the naked eye, irrespective of which angle it is viewed from.

Such design challenges have yet to be overcome by Samsung, Huawei, or others, and they have been rolling out