Global Foldable Smartphone Market Booms; Samsung and OPPO Lead the Way
According to a report released on Friday, the foldable smartphone market experienced a significant 64% growth in the first quarter of this year compared to the previous year. The sell-in volume reached 2.5 million units.
That’s significant because, according to Counterpoint Research, the foldable market rose amid a 14.2 percent year-over-year decline in the global smartphone market over the same period.
The strong growth of the global folding box market is largely due to the growth of the Chinese folding box market.
“In China, new foldables such as the OPPO N2 and N2 Flip made big releases. These major launch events continue to generate market interest.
As a result, Chinese consumers have become familiar with foldable products compared to other regions,” says research analyst Woojin Son.
OPPO ranked second in the Chinese foldable market by a small margin to the leading Huawei, helped by the N2 Flip and N2 released at the end of 2022.
In particular, the N2 Flip, an OPPO clamshell foldable, significantly contributed to the clamshell sales growth in China, overtaking the Huawei Pocket S.
Samsung aimed to target the Chinese market by launching the W23 and W23-Flip models, which are variants of the Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4, which are mainly manufactured for the Chinese and MEA markets. According to the report, this helped Samsung grow rapidly in the Chinese foldable product market in the first quarter of 2023.
“We believe that in 2023, competition between OEMs will intensify in the global folding market due to more aggressive target market expansion; intensifying price competition and increasing sales volumes of clamshell-type foldable smartphones through various product launches,” says senior analyst Jene Park.
Park noted that Apple is still out of the short-term forecast.
“However, as the overall consumer response to foldable phones improves and Apple may release non-foldable products soon, the brand’s entry into the foldable smartphone market is likely to take place after 2025,” Park noted.
