Chinese brands had a great 2024 for their global smartphone foldable shipments. However, it is not good news at all, as the entire market had scant growth at 2.9%.
Research firm Counterpoint Research shared that almost all Chinese smartphone companies saw a huge increase in their global smartphone foldable shipments last year, except for Oppo, which had a 72% drop.
According to the report, Motorola, Xiaomi, Honor, Huawei, and Vivo had a 253%, 108%, 106%, 54%, and 23% growth last year in the foldable market. While this sounds impressive, the firm shared that the general foldable market barely made an improvement in 2024. Counterpoint underscored that the reason behind the low 2.9% growth of the foldable market was Samsung and Oppo.
“Although many OEMs saw double- and triple-digit growth, the market’s overall growth was impacted by Samsung’s tough Q4 due to political instability, and OPPO cutting production of its more affordable clamshell foldables,” Counterpoint shared.
According to the firm, this slow growth will continue in 2025, but it noted that 2026 will be the year for foldables. Counterpoint predicts that the said year will be dominated by Samsung and, interestingly, Apple, which is expected to release its first foldable in 2026.
