Despite a rough maiden voyage, the foldable market has been expanding a lot over the past four years. With Samsung leading the pack, it’s inching closer to the mainstream. Well, according to IDC, the foldable phone market might grow an impressive 50% in 2023.
With the condition of the global economy, the smartphone market has been struggling over the past couple of years. While this is true, the foldable market has been going pretty strong. That’s surprising, as these flexible devices are still on the higher end of the consumer smartphone price bracket. We’ve yet to see a clamshell foldable launching under $999 or a notebook foldable launching under $1,500.
However, the foldable phone market is flourishing. We can chalk this up to the fact that foldable phones are getting more durable, more people are seeing the utility of foldable phones, and the fact that more companies are bringing their foldable phones to the market.
The foldable phone market could grow 50% in 2023
So, the smartphone market is expected to shrink by about 1.1% this year. However, the foldable smartphone market could see a sharp increase. Last year, there were about 1,205,800,000 smartphone shipments, and 14.2 million (1.2%) of them were foldables. While that’s a small amount, relatively speaking, the market is still on the rise.
The report states that, by the end of 2023, there could be about 21.4 million foldable phones shipped. That’s about a 50.5% increase, and we can expect that to be led by Samsung. The Korean giant owns the mass majority of the foldable smartphone market.
IDC is also looking toward the future. The firm predicts that the foldable market will continue to increase over the following years. If correct, then the foldable smartphone market could ship 48 million units in 2027. Based on the prediction, the market could make up 3.5% of the total smartphone market.
Obviously, you’ll want to take this with a grain of salt (or an entire salt mine). This is four years down the road. With the state of the global economy, we’re taking things day by day. By the time 2027 rolls around- if we haven’t been enslaved by rogue AI- things could be completely different. In any case, it’s nice to see that the foldable smartphone market is growing.
2023-03-31 15:10:27