Huawei's CEO has confirmed that we'll see a foldable 5G phone from the company at Mobile World Congress in February.

Richard Yu, the Chinese company's boss, announced the launch in the closing moments of a pre-MWC 2019 briefing in Beijing.

"We look forward to seeing you in Barcelona in February, where we will launch the world's first 5G smartphone with foldable screen," he said.

Foldable phones are poised to become the next big thing in the wireless world. Much of the attention has gone to Samsung, which has promised a bendable device for the first half of 2019, after briefly teasing it in November. And just this week, Xiaomi showed off a "double folding" phone.

Huawei may have raised the stakes somewhat by teasing 5G capabilities for its phone. This year will mark the first big deployment of the high-speed, next-generation networking technology, and phones designed for it.