For years, foldable smartphones occupied an awkward middle ground — too expensive for the masses, too fragile for skeptics, and too niche for carriers to push aggressively. That era appears to be ending. New data shows foldable phone shipments surging in the first quarter of 2025, driven by aggressive pricing from Chinese manufacturers, Samsung’s continued dominance, and a broader consumer appetite for devices that do more than the standard glass slab.
According to research firm IDC, global foldable smartphone shipments jumped 26% year over year in Q1 2025, reaching 4.1 million units. That’s the strongest first-quarter performance the category has ever posted, and it signals something more than a temporary spike. The foldable market, long dismissed as a sideshow, is becoming a meaningful segment of the premium smartphone business.
CNET reported on the IDC findings, noting that Samsung maintained its position as the top foldable vendor worldwide, shipping 1.6 million units in the quarter. But the real story isn’t Samsung holding serve. It’s everyone else catching up.
Huawei shipped 1.2 million foldable units in Q1, good for second place globally and a sharp increase from a year earlier. The company has leaned hard into foldables as a differentiator in the Chinese market, where it can’t offer Google services and must compete on hardware innovation alone. Its Mate X5 and newer tri-fold Mate XT have generated significant consumer interest. And Huawei isn’t alone among Chinese brands making noise.
Honor, Oppo (through its OnePlus sub-brand internationally), and Vivo have all expanded their foldable lineups. Xiaomi’s Mix Fold series has gained traction as well, particularly in Asia. These companies are doing something Samsung was slow to do: bring foldable prices down. Several Chinese-market foldables now start below $800, a price point that was unthinkable for the category just two years ago. Some models from Honor and Oppo have dipped below $600 in China, putting them within striking distance of flagship non-folding phones.
Price compression is the single most important force reshaping this market. When Samsung launched the original Galaxy Fold in 2019, it carried a $1,980 price tag. The latest Galaxy Z Fold 6 starts at $1,899 — barely any movement after six years. Samsung’s clamshell-style Z Flip 6 is more accessible at $1,099, but Chinese competitors are undercutting that figure by hundreds of dollars. The result: Samsung’s unit share in foldables has been gradually eroding even as the overall market expands.
IDC’s data shows Samsung’s share of foldable shipments fell from roughly 50% in early 2024 to around 39% in Q1 2025. Still the leader, but the gap is narrowing fast.
This matters because foldables represent one of the few genuine growth vectors in a smartphone industry that has otherwise plateaued. Global smartphone shipments have been roughly flat for several years, hovering between 1.1 and 1.2 billion units annually. Consumers are holding onto phones longer. Upgrade cycles have stretched past three years in many markets. Carriers are struggling to find compelling reasons to get people into stores.
Foldables offer that reason. They’re visually distinct, functionally different, and — critically — they carry higher average selling prices than standard phones, which means fatter margins for manufacturers and better commissions for retail partners. Even at the reduced Chinese price points, foldables command a premium over comparably specced non-folding devices.
But the growth isn’t evenly distributed geographically. China accounts for an outsized share of global foldable shipments, roughly 40% by most analyst estimates. The domestic competition there is ferocious, with Huawei, Honor, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi all battling for share. Europe and North America remain Samsung-dominated in the foldable space, largely because most Chinese foldable models either aren’t available in those regions or lack the carrier partnerships needed to drive volume.
That could change. Honor has been expanding aggressively in Europe, and its Magic V3 — one of the thinnest book-style foldables on the market — has received strong reviews from Western tech press. OnePlus, which has solid brand recognition in India and parts of Europe, launched the Open in late 2023 and has hinted at a successor. If these brands can crack carrier distribution deals in the U.S. and Western Europe, Samsung’s comfortable position outside China will face real pressure.
Then there’s the elephant not yet in the room. Apple.
Apple has not released a foldable iPhone, and the company has said nothing publicly about its plans. But supply chain reports from analysts at firms including TF International Securities and display industry trackers have consistently pointed to Apple working on foldable display technology. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple is developing a foldable device, though whether it will be a phone, a tablet hybrid, or something else entirely remains unclear. Most industry watchers don’t expect a foldable iPhone before 2027 at the earliest.
When Apple does enter the foldable market — and at this point it’s a matter of when, not if — it will instantly reshape the competitive dynamics. Apple’s entry into any product category tends to expand the total addressable market dramatically, as it did with smartwatches, wireless earbuds, and tablets. A foldable iPhone would likely bring tens of millions of consumers into the category who currently see foldables as an Android-only curiosity.
For now, though, the market belongs to Android manufacturers. And they’re using the window to establish brand loyalty and refine their hardware.
Durability has improved markedly. Early foldables suffered from screen creasing, hinge failures, and dust ingress that damaged the flexible display. Samsung’s Ultra Thin Glass, introduced with the Z Flip in 2020, was a step forward but still felt delicate. Current-generation foldables from multiple manufacturers use improved hinge mechanisms with tighter tolerances, better water resistance ratings (IPX8 is now common), and display cover materials that resist creasing more effectively. Samsung’s latest devices carry an IP48 rating, addressing dust resistance for the first time in its foldable lineup — though still trailing the full IP68 rating of its Galaxy S series.
Software has caught up too. Google’s Android 14 and 15 releases have included significant optimizations for foldable form factors, including better app continuity when folding and unfolding, improved multitasking interfaces, and APIs that let developers take advantage of the larger inner display. Samsung’s One UI has offered foldable-specific features for years, but Google’s platform-level support means third-party apps are increasingly foldable-aware, reducing the jarring experience of apps that don’t know what to do with an unusual aspect ratio.
The carrier angle is worth examining. In the United States, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have all increased promotional activity around foldables in 2025. Trade-in deals that bring the effective cost of a Galaxy Z Flip below $500 have become common. Carriers like foldables because they tend to be attached to premium plans, and because the novelty factor reduces buyer’s remorse and return rates compared to yet another iterative slab phone upgrade. Internal carrier data, shared at industry conferences, suggests foldable buyers have higher average revenue per user and lower churn than buyers of standard flagships.
Not everything is rosy. Foldables still represent a small fraction of total smartphone shipments — roughly 1.5% globally. Screen durability, while improved, remains a concern for many potential buyers. The crease down the center of book-style foldables is still visible and tactile on every device currently on the market, and no manufacturer has fully solved it. And the trade-off between thinness and battery capacity means most foldables offer merely adequate battery life rather than the all-day-plus endurance of the best traditional flagships.
There’s also the question of whether the form factor’s novelty will sustain long-term growth or eventually hit a ceiling. Tablets and smartwatches both experienced explosive early growth followed by market maturation and, in the tablet’s case, outright decline before stabilizing. Foldables could follow a similar trajectory — rapid adoption among enthusiasts and early mainstream buyers, followed by a plateau once the most interested consumers have been served.
Counterpoint Research, another firm tracking the foldable space, projects that annual foldable shipments will reach 25 to 30 million units by 2027, up from an estimated 16 to 18 million in 2024. That’s healthy growth but still a niche within the broader smartphone market. The bullish case depends heavily on continued price declines, Apple’s eventual entry, and further improvements in durability that eliminate the remaining consumer hesitation.
Samsung, for its part, is expected to announce the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 later this summer, likely at its annual Galaxy Unpacked event in July. Leaks suggest iterative improvements: thinner bodies, better cameras, and Samsung’s own take on AI-powered features integrated into the foldable experience. Whether Samsung will finally cut prices to match the competitive pressure from China remains one of the biggest open questions heading into the second half of the year.
So where does this leave the foldable market in mid-2025? Growing faster than skeptics predicted. More competitive than Samsung would like. And still waiting for the one entrant — Apple — that could turn a healthy niche into a mass-market category. The fold, it turns out, isn’t a gimmick. It’s a form factor searching for its iPhone moment. And every quarter of 26% growth makes that moment feel a little closer.
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