Samsung was first to market – or somewhat first – with a folding device. The original Galaxy Fold was launched back in 2019, though it did get recalled before it even started shipping due to a few issues with the screen, but it started shipping later that year. Ever since then, just about every Android manufacturer has jumped on board with making a foldable.
Technically, Royale beat Samsung to the punch with the Flexpai which was not a good device at all. And many of you probably forgot about it entirely. Samsung gained an early lead in the foldables market; this was partly due to the fact that Samsung was also making many of the components for foldables, including the displays. Ultra Thin Glass was an invention of Samsung, and while it did start to sell it to competitors, it kept most of it for itself. This isn’t new, Samsung does this with their AMOLED displays too. That’s why Samsung devices typically have the best-rated displays.
Now, fast-forward 5 years. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 has just launched alongside the Galaxy Z Flip 6, among many other foldables. And Samsung is starting to lose its edge. Recently, Tech Insights published an infographic showing the foldables market share around the world by OEM, and it also compared them year over year. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, Samsung will lose its market share in 2024.
There are two companies giving it to Samsung real good right now, and that’s Huawei and HONOR. Which is pretty ironic since Huawei created HONOR and then sold it after the US banned Huawei, but that’s another story. Vivo is also being super competitive lately and taking a good chunk out of Samsung’s book-style foldable market share. However, Vivo’s market share is remaining mostly the same in Q2 2024 vers Q2 2023.
Samsung is struggling in markets that are growing the fastest
Five years into foldables and some markets have already plateaued. In fact, Europe has decreased by 29% year-over-year, which is rather impressive and not in a good way. Asia saw a 91% growth year-over-year, Australia saw 109%, Africa saw 61% and the US at 39%. Samsung is in the top three in every market, and somehow number one in Asia, but they are on the downtrend, with Huawei and OnePlus catching up.
Keep in mind, this is for Q2 of 2024, so that is before the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Fold 6 were announced, let alone put up for sale. And it might not include the new Motorola Razrs, as those came out in June, while Q2 ended on June 30.
You can take a look at the whole infographic below, and on the other side we’ll talk about why Samsung’s lead is diminishing.
Why is Samsung struggling now?
There’s two main reasons why Samsung is struggling, and they are related. First of all, Samsung is seeing far more competition than they were at the start of the foldable revolution. Even Google and OnePlus have jumped in the game, releasing their first devices in 2023. The other is, Samsung’s reluctance to change. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold and Flip haven’t changed much in the past 3 years, despite foldables still being a new category and basically expecting huge changes year-to-year.
More competition is good, unless you’re Samsung
In the beginning, the only real competition for Samsung was Huawei and HONOR. And surprise, surprise, they aren’t selling their devices in North America. They also don’t typically launch in Europe right away. Giving Samsung the ability to go into North America and Europe and get an early lead in the foldable market. Which Samsung did.
Over the years, Samsung has made some changes to its Fold and Flip models, however since the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Flip 3, they’ve been pretty incremental, while competitors are doing huge changes. Xiaomi just launched a flip phone with a larger battery than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (which has had the same size battery since Galaxy Z Fold 3, which is smaller than the first two folds from Samsung). Let’s not even get started on the camera front.
Buyers that want a foldable now have more choice than ever – even here in the US. And that’s not going well for Samsung. They aren’t even number one worldwide anymore. Instead, Huawei is. A company that can’t sell phones in the US, can’t use Google services, and can’t even use anyone else’s chipsets. That’s pretty damning.
Samsung only does incremental updates, now
Let’s face it, Samsung’s foldables are very polished at this point. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 feels super polished compared to the OnePlus Open, or the HONOR Magic V2 RSR, but there are still things that can be changed here. Primarily the display aspect ratio, cameras and the battery size. Most of which have barely changed in the past 3 generations. Samsung keeps making the Galaxy Z Fold a tiny bit wider every year, and now it’s 22:9, making it a tiny bit taller than a traditional smartphone, but for many, it’s still a bit too tall.
On the camera front, Samsung could really do a whole lot better than it has been. Samsung has a 50-megapixel primary sensor, 12-megapixel ultrawide and a 10-megapixel telephoto. The same cameras as the Galaxy Z Fold 4 from 2022. The cameras are good, don’t get me wrong, but when there are competitors like the OnePlus Open and soon the HONOR Magic V3 that perform much, much better for the same price or even less, it makes it hard to defend Samsung. The OnePlus Open was announced a year ago, and it blows away the Galaxy Z Fold 6 in terms of photo quality. When you’re paying nearly $2,000 for a phone, you want better than just “good” cameras.
The other thing is the battery. And I kind of get why Samsung has lagged behind here. They seem to still be afraid of replicating the Galaxy Note 7 debacle again. That’s likely also why its charging speeds are much slower. But come on Samsung, you have one of the smallest batteries in a book-style foldable. And one of the slowest charging batteries at that – Google somehow offers slower charging on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
Americans miss out on the good stuff
As someone who gets to review a lot of phones throughout the year, including a good number of ones that are not available in the US, I can confidently say that us Americans are missing out. There are fantastic foldables like the Vivo XFold 3 Pro, the HONOR Magic V3 (announced in China, going global at IFA next week), and the Xiaomi Mix Fold 4, just to name a few. Now, we do get a little taste of this with the OnePlus Open, but the carriers refuse to sell it for some reason.
Why do Americans miss out on all of these sweet foldables? You can thank the government. Back in 2018, after years and even decades of threatening, President Trump actually did it. He banned Huawei from selling anything in the US and even working with American companies. Because of the latter, Huawei was banned. They could no longer work with Google on Android. Instead, they had to wait for AOSP to come out and then use that, which means they couldn’t use Google services even outside of the US. They could no longer work with Qualcomm, whose chipsets powered a lot of Huawei’s phones. Surely, they could use MediaTek or their own Kirin chipsets, right? Nope. Because they are all based on ARM architecture, which is part American-owned, they couldn’t do that either.
This felt like a death knell for Huawei and HONOR at the time. Huawei decided to spin off HONOR and get it some new owners so it could thrive. In 2021, Huawei sold off HONOR, and HONOR has never looked back. Now, they are preparing to launch the thinnest and most advanced foldable yet at IFA next week. However, we’ve already seen it since it was launched in China earlier this summer.
Why did the government ban Huawei? Because they want to be the only ones spying on Americans. It’s the same reason why they are trying to ban TikTok now. Just like with a possible TikTok ban, the Huawei ban hurt Americans more than helped. Though it did help Samsung and Apple quite a bit.
2024-08-31 15:06:59