Foldable Market in Flux: Samsung's Struggles, Apple's Looming Entry
The foldable smartphone market, which has struggled to become mainstream, is now facing an unexpected downturn. After slow growth for years, sales are expected to decline for the first time in 2025. After a 2.9% increase in 2024, a 4% decrease is predicted for 2025. This is certainly concerning, but it doesn’t paint the full picture of what’s going on and what’s to come - Counter Point Research thinks 2026 will be a massive year for foldables... This decline occurs despite growth from brands like Huawei, Motorola, HONOR, and Xiaomi.
The main issue in 2024 was market leader Samsung’s significant 33% year-over-year drop in sales throughout 2024. They dominate such a large part of the segment they were able to pull down the entire segment’s growth. If that sort of trend were to continue, it would likely outweigh the continued growth observed from other competing OEMs.
Thankfully, Samsung seems to be aware of the crisis they are facing and have even gone as far as to publicly promise to get back to being the Samsung of old. They simply cannot trot out another barely-different Z Fold and they know it. It has been rumored for quite a while now that the Galaxy Z Fold7 will adopt the long coveted wider aspect ratio cover display of its competitors. It’ll also be much thinner than last year’s model and it should sport an improved primary camera taken from their Ultra line of phones.
Can the Z Fold7 turn things around?
Samsung is also said to be readying not just the standard Galaxy Z Flip device, but also a cheaper FE model that will be a slight step down in specs in order to bring the price down. These factors alone make me question this prediction as I can easily see sales growth from Samsung finally doing what the consumers have been asking for after all these years.
Regardless, it’s important to note that while segment growth slowed, it really only slowed with one brand, but the decline predicted for 2025 hinges on a broader “pull-back” from many of the smaller OEMs.
As analyst Jene Park said in the article, “it is definitely not a sign of the market peaking; rather it is a sign of regrouping before 2026, which is expected to be exciting and rejuvenating for the segment with the entry of Apple and a slew of clamshells.” Research Director Calvin Lee also said “At the moment, this doesn’t look like a market that is plateauing – it looks like a market that is about to transform. And that requires a lot of planning, hence the slight pullback this year.”
Obviously, we’re burying the lede a bit here. Yes indeed, the reason 2026 jumps through the roof is at least in part due to Apple’s entry into the folding phone world. Strangely, they do also expect to see the smaller OEMs showing massive growth that year. We’re left to guess if that’s because of an influx of cheaper clamshell devices or if Apple’s entry into the segment will spur along sales for other OEMs as the folding phone suddenly becomes more legitimized.
Source: Counter Point Research