Nearly six years ago, I wrote an article lambasting the smartphone industry for still trying to make folding phones happen, after years of trying and failing. It’s a gimmicky form factor, I proclaimed—bulky, fragile, and destined to go the way of the 3D TV, which was another example of manufacturers trying to push something for which there was no appreciable consumer pull.
Then, of course, Samsung and other manufacturers went on to make something of a success of the folding phone. But how wrong was I, exactly?
Last week, Counterpoint Research said the global market for folding smartphones grew 49% in the first quarter of this year, with Huawei at the forefront (Huawei’s shipments of such devices were up 257% year on year.) And according to new data from the market intelligence firm TrendForce, 17.8 million foldable phones will be shipped this year.
That’s pretty impressive, but it’s also still only 1.5% of the smartphone market. However, TrendForce expects the form factor to command 4.8% by 2028, partly due to falling prices—2019’s Samsung Galaxy Fold cost a cough-worthy $1,980, but ZTE’s Nubia brand is now selling a folding phone in Japan for just $499.
Samsung is still projected to have the lion’s share of the folding phone market this year, but the Korean giant is a less dominant beast in this sub-sector than it once was, with its name on just 50.4% of shipments, down from over 80% just a couple years ago.
TrendForce has Huawei boosting its market share from 12% last year to over 30% in 2024, followed by Motorola with 6%, then a bunch of other Chinese brands. The scale of Huawei’s jump would supposedly be aided by the launch of a rumored “tri-fold” phone, which somewhat reminds me of The Onion’s profane yet prescient “Five Blades” article from a couple decades back—still the best takedown of the corporate “more is more” attitude.
And then there’s Apple’s so-called iPhone Flip, which rumormongers have been predicting for a good seven years now. The Information reported earlier this year that Cupertino has not one but two foldable iPhone prototypes knocking around. If it comes to (pardon the pun) fruition, Apple’s entry “could significantly shift market dynamics,” TrendForce’s analysts noted.
Personally, I think Apple has plenty on its plate without trying to belatedly enter yet another market that’s taken off despite its lack of presence—see: generative AI—but what do I know? I thought foldable phones were a bust and that’s clearly not the case, even if, as TrendForce points out, their repair rates are relatively high.
But I’m keen to know what you all think. Have you bought a foldable phone or would you consider doing so? What were your experiences with the form factor? And do you think Apple is likely to dive into the field? Drop me an email here.
More news below.
David Meyer
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.
NEWSWORTHY
Biden vetoes crypto resolution. President Joe Biden has (as he said he would) vetoed a congressional resolution that slammed the Securities and Exchange Commission for its guidance telling banks to treat crypto assets as liabilities. As Reuters reports, the agency says this guidance is needed to protect investors, and Biden’s take is that the “Republican-led resolution would inappropriately constrain the SEC’s ability to set forth appropriate guardrails and address future issues.”
Trump joins TikTok. Former President Donald Trump has joined TikTok, the platform he famously tried to ban once upon a time. His account launched Saturday night with a post showing him at an Ultimate Fighting Championship match, the New York Times reports. It had already amassed 3.5 million followers at the time of writing on Monday.
X’s adult content rule. The existence of adults-only content on Twitter/X is nothing new, but X has now formally tweaked its rules to, er, explicitly allow it. According to TechCrunch, NSFW content needs to be labeled as such—and consensually produced—to meet X’s standards. Users under 18, or those who haven’t added their birth dates to their profiles, won’t be able to see it.
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES
11 days
—The time it took for Live Nation to confirm a serious Ticketmaster data breach after learning about it. As The Verge reports, the Ticketmaster parent used a regulatory filing late on Friday evening to reveal the existence of the breach. The hacking resulted in the personal data (including credit card details) of 560 million customers being put up for sale online. Live Nation itself became aware of the incident at a third-party cloud database provider on May 20, a week before the data was hawked on the dark web.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Elon Musk slams Trump’s ‘trivial’ hush-money verdict, saying it did ‘great damage’ to the legal system, by Seamus Webster
A former tech CEO announced a fake offer to buy Getty Images in order to boost its stock price, authorities say, by the Associated Press
Microsoft announces plans to invest $3.2 billion in Swedish AI—its largest-ever infrastructure bet in the Nordic country, by Bloomberg
BEFORE YOU GO
Facebook demographics. Facebook may have a reputation these days as a place for older people to hang out, but its parent, Meta, would very much like to change your mind on that. Reuters reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s firm has released demographic information showing that over 40 million 18-to-29-year-olds in the U.S. and Canada check Facebook daily, which is apparently the highest figure for that cohort in three years (a point that’s hard to verify, as this is Meta’s first release of such data).
