My guess is the main goal is to recoup R&D prior to a proper consumer launch. And you know what, I'm fine with that. Personally, I'm holding out for gen 2-3 of this form factor when the price comes down to Earth. But smart of them to get it into people's hands where they can get real testing as to what works and what doesn't for consumers.

I'd be fascinated to see a breakdown of consumer demographic/profiles for the customers that purchased via pre-order.

My suspicion is that it's people interested in the engineering of the screen rather than consumers who've identified a personal use case for it.

That might be some, I think for many it's just being able to buy "a piece of the future today".

Whether or not it ends up truly being practical, it's a phone that looks and does things that are radically different from most mainstream phones.

People will think their fancy future folding phone is cool, and other people will probably see it and think it's interesting and want to talk about it or see it work.

Kind of like paying $600 plus a 2-year contract for an iPhone in 2007 with a slow processor, no 3G, no MMS, no copy-and-paste, etc.

It's a status symbol. You'll see plenty of CEOs of multinationals with Folds.