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The Samsung Galaxy Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

Samsung on Wednesday launched two new folding smartphones that are thinner and lighter than earlier models, as well as a tablet and two new smartwatches.

The South Korean electronics giant said its new phones, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Fold 5, come with more rigid hinges and brighter displays — but offered mainly incremental upgrades over last year’s models.

CNBC takes a look at some of the new features.

Galaxy Z Flip 5

The star of the show in Samsung’s new folding phone portfolio is its new Galaxy Z Flip 5.

The Flip 5 is a clamshell-style folding handset that, when shut, takes a square shape that fits more comfortably into your pocket. Flip it open, and it becomes a regular, rectangular smartphone.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5’s standout feature is a much larger cover display.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

It’s water- and dust-resistant, and has a three-stop, “zero gap” hinge to adjust the device’s angle. It’s a lot slimmer than its predecessor, with the hinge gap now barely noticeable when you fold it shut.

But the standout feature of the phone is a much larger cover display, which you can use to select a range of widgets, including your calendar and clock — and it allows for enhanced selfie-taking.

The screen on the front cover of the phone has a new “flex” window that allows users to expand its 1.9-inch display to a 3.4-inch one, so that you can customize it to more easily access notifications and widgets.

Though the hinge is tighter and the phone itself feels sturdier than previous iterations, there’s still a noticeable line that runs down the middle where the phone’s hinge is located.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5. Foldables, or phones that bend in half, remain a niche part of the smartphone market. But they’re growing fast.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

Foldables, or phones that bend in half, remain a niche part of the smartphone market. But they’re growing fast.

Samsung faces competition in this category from a slew of rival phonemakers, mainly Chinese firms, that are challenging the company with their own folding devices.

In February, Chinese vendor Oppo launched the Find N2 Flip. And Honor, the spinoff brand from Huawei, launched its Magic Vs for international markets.

Motorola plans to bring out a new version of its foldable Razr device later this year. Lenovo owns Motorola.

Still, Samsung remains the market leader. The firm launched its first foldable handset in 2019. In 2022, it commanded an 80% share of global foldable shipments, according to Canalys.

The market expects foldable phone shipments to double to 30 million in 2023. But foldables accounted for just 1.1% of the total smartphone market last year, according to IDC data.

Still, that gives the industry ample room to grow. And, as people who’ve held on to their phones for longer near their chance to upgrade or trade their old phone in, they’re more likely to buy the top-of-the-range smartphones rather than older, less advanced ones.

“Currently, I think foldables will remain a lucrative niche with good margins and premium positions,” Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC via email.

“They resonate well with consumers that want to stand out from the crowd and have something different from the homogeneous mono-bloc black rectangle.”

The Flip 5, which is available for pre-order, starts at a price of $999.99. 

Galaxy Fold 5

The Samsung Galaxy Fold 5.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

Samsung also announced a new version of its Galaxy Fold phone lineup, the Fold 5.

The advances on the Galaxy Fold 5 are less noticeable than those on the new Galaxy Z Flip, with Samsung mainly offering more incremental updates.

The Fold 5 has a 6.2-inch display that can be folded out to reveal a bigger 7.6-inch main screen akin to that of a tablet. The main display is much brighter than the last, too, emitting 1750 nits, the industry measure for brightness.

It is 2.4mm less thick than its predecessor, according to Samsung. It also comes with an under-display camera so that you barely notice it when using your phone to message people or watch movies. It’s also compatible with the company’s S Pen.

The Galaxy Fold 5 starts at $1.799.99.

Foldables may be a niche part of the market, but they offer a number of benefits over the standard black slabs we’ve all become accustomed to — not least because of the ability to have more than one app displayed on a screen.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

Foldables may be a niche part of the market, but they offer a number of benefits over the standard black slabs we’ve all become accustomed to — not least because of the ability to have more than one app displayed on a screen.

For instance, when using the Galaxy Fold 5, you can fold the device out to a tablet-like slab and display one app on one half, and another app on the other.

Google entered the market earlier this year, launching the Pixel Fold, its first folding phone.

That the launch was from one of the largest U.S. tech companies — and the owner of Android — lent some credibility to the market.

Still, Paolo Pescatore, co-founder of PP Foresight, said that all eyes remain firmly on what Apple will do in foldables. “In essence, Apple does not need to do anything right now,” he told CNBC.

“No doubt Apple is looking and working hard behind the scenes to bring novel devices to market. When it does, it will invigorate this segment and kickstart consumer demand for foldables.”

Samsung is doubling down on foldables even as the smartphone market more broadly is contracting. Global smartphone sales declined 11% year over year in the second quarter of 2023 amid gloomy demand, according to analyst firm Canalys.

But the market is showing some early signs of recovery.

“The smartphone market is sending early signals of recovery after six consecutive quarters of decline since 2022,” said Le Xuan Chiew, analyst at Canalys, in a report last week. 

“Smartphone inventory has begun to clear up as smartphone vendors prioritized cutting inventory of old models to make room for new launches.”

Galaxy Tab S9

(From left) The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, Galaxy Fold 5, Galaxy Watch 6, and Galaxy Tab S9.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

Samsung also launched its newest tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9. It comes in three versions: an 11-inch Tab S9, a 12.4-inch Tab S9+, and a 14.6-inch Tab S9 Ultra.

The Tab S9 has a 120-hertz display for smoother scrolling and can be viewed more easily outdoors, Samsung said.

It comes with an S Pen straight out of the box. There’s also a “creator edition” available for the S Pen that supports changeable tips for drawing and writing.

Samsung said the tablet comes with enhanced speakers that allow for more cinematic audio.

It can also act more like a desktop computer, with the ability to mirror apps found on Windows PCs.

The Tab S9 starts at $799.99.

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Digital physical therapy provider Hinge Health files for IPO

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Digital physical therapy provider Hinge Health files for IPO

Hinge Health’s Enso product.

Courtesy: Hinge Health

Hinge Health, a provider of digital physical therapy services, filed to go public on Monday, the latest sign that the IPO market is starting to crack open.

Hinge Health uses software to help patients treat musculoskeletal injuries, chronic pain and carry out post-surgery rehabilitation remotely. The company’s revenue last year increased 33% to $390 million, according to its prospectus, and its net loss for the year narrowed to $11.9 million from $108.1 million a year earlier.

The IPO market has been quiet across the tech sector for the past three years, but within digital health it’s been almost completely silent, as companies have struggled to adapt to an environment of muted growth following the Covid-19 pandemic. No digital health companies held IPOs in 2023, according to a report from Rock Health, and last year the only notable offerings were Waystar, a health-care payment software vendor, and Tempus AI, a precision medicine company.

“We have many decades of work ahead,” Hinge Health CEO Daniel Perez said in the filing Monday. “We hope you join us on this journey.”

The company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “HNGE.”

Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg, Hinge Health’s chairman, co-founded the company in 2014 after experiencing personal struggles with physical rehabilitation, according to the company’s website.

Members of Hinge Health can access virtual exercise therapy and an electrical nerve stimulation device called Enso. The company claims its technology can help users improve their pain, reduce the need for surgery and cut down health-care costs.

The San Francisco-based company has raised more than $1 billion from investors including Tiger Global and Coatue Management, and it boasted a $6.2 billion valuation as of October 2021. The biggest outside shareholders are venture firms Insight Partners and Atomico, which own 19% and 15% of the stock, respectively, according to the filing.

Hinge Health’s dual class stock structure gives each share of Class B common stock 15 votes. Almost all of the Class B shares are owned by the founders and top investors.

Employees across more than 2,250 organizations, including Morgan Stanley, Target and General Motors, can access Hinge Health’s offerings. The company had more than 532,000 members as of Dec. 31, and more than 20 million people are eligible to enroll, the filing said.

Hinge Health declined to comment.

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Fintech stocks plummet as Wall Street worries about consumer spending, credit

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Fintech stocks plummet as Wall Street worries about consumer spending, credit

People wait in line for t-shirts at a pop-up kiosk for the online brokerage Robinhood along Wall Street after the company went public with an IPO earlier in the day on July 29, 2021 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

It was a bad day for tech stocks, and a brutal one for fintech.

As the Nasdaq suffered its steepest decline since 2022, some of the biggest losers were companies that sit at the intersection of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

Stock trading app Robinhood tumbled 20%, bitcoin holder Strategy fell 17% and crypto exchange Coinbase lost 18%. Much of the slide in those three stocks was tied to the drop in bitcoin, which fell almost 5%, continuing its downward trajectory. The price of the leading cryptocurrency is now down 19% in the past month, falling after a big-post election pop in late 2024.

Beyond the crypto trade, online lenders and payments companies also fell more than the broader market. Affirm, which popularized buy now, pay later loans, dropped 11%, as did SoFi, which offers personal loans and mortgages. Shopify, which provides payment technology to online retailers, fell more than 7%.

JPMorgan Chase fintech analysts on Monday highlighted declining consumer confidence as a potential challenge for companies that rely on consumer spending for growth. In late February, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index slipped to 98.3 for the month, down nearly 7%, the largest monthly drop since August 2021. Walmart recently reported a shift away from discretionary purchases, underscoring the potential trouble.

“Our universe has modestly outperformed the S&P 500 since the election, but sentiment has soured of late on declining consumer confidence and signs of slowing discretionary spend,” the JPMorgan analysts wrote.

The fintech selloff follows a strong rally in the fourth quarter, driven by Fed rate cut expectations and hopes for a more favorable regulatory environment under the Trump administration.

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Oracle misses on earnings but touts data center growth from AI

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Oracle misses on earnings but touts data center growth from AI

Larry Ellison, chairman and co-founder of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld 2017 conference in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2017.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oracle issued quarterly results on Monday that trailed analysts’ estimates, but the company offered bullish comments on its cloud infrastructure segment.

Here is how Oracle did compared to LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $1.47 adjusted vs. $1.49 expected
  • Revenue: $14.13 billion vs. $14.39 billion expected

Revenue increased 6% from $13.3 billion in the same period last year. Net income rose 22% to $2.94 billion, or $1.02 a share, from $2.4 billion, or 85 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue in Oracle’s cloud services business jumped 10% from a year earlier to $11.01 billion, accounting for 78% of total sales.

The company’s cloud infrastructure segment, which helps businesses move workloads out of their own data centers, has been booming due to demand for computing power that can support artificial intelligence projects. Oracle said revenue in its cloud infrastructure unit increased 49% from a year earlier to $2.7 billion.

“We are on schedule to double our data center capacity this calendar year,” Oracle Chair Larry Ellison said in a release. “Customer demand is at record levels.”

In January, President Donald Trump announced plans to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure in the U.S. in collaboration with Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank. The first initiative of the joint venture, called Stargate, will be to construct data centers in Texas — an effort that is already underway, Ellison said during the announcement at the White House.

Oracle’s cloud and on-premises licenses business contributed $1.1 billion in revenue during the quarter, down 10% year over year.

Oracle also said it is increasing its quarterly dividend to 50 cents a share from 40 cents.

As of Monday’s close, the stock is down almost 11% year to date.

Oracle will hold its quarterly call with investors and will share its outlook at 5 p.m. ET.

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