Writing about how 2024 will be ‘The year of the foldable,’ a groundbreaking year that will make the preceding four or five years of foldable innovation appear like a high school dress rehearsal, was the straightforward task assigned. After the new year, it’s the actual show, the huge foldable show.
Yes, I can handle this, but there’s one small issue. 2024 is not going to be the year that foldables take off. Without the involvement of one significant stakeholder, Apple, it is impossible.
If anyone is setting the benchmark for the foldable wave, it’s Samsung, which has confidently produced five generations of foldables to date. Even if I think the names of all Samsung products are excessively long, I must admit that I am a big lover of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5. Samsung’s folding phones are no just visual or design anomalies; inside are gigantic, flexible displays that are just ready to be unfurled, as well as large external screens.
There are no restrictions in the lineup other than pricing. With the Z Fold, you get exceptional cameras, twice as much screen space as a standard phone, pen functionality, and even water resistance. Rivals such as the OnePlus Open, Google Pixel Fold, and Motorola Razr are capitalizing on Samsung’s initial concepts by incorporating larger exterior screens, slimmer chassis, and occasionally enhanced cameras. However, not all devices are as durable as Samsung’s foldables.
Foldable phones are an interesting product category and one of the last genuine areas of innovation that phone manufacturers have left to pursue, following ten years of phone design and functionality slipping down a valley of similarity.
A tiny market
To be honest though, not many people are purchasing foldable phones. With almost 80% of the market share for foldable phones, Samsung leads the market, although that is still a very small portion. According to the same report, just 1% of smartphones are sold as foldables. Even worse, it seems that Samsung is selling a large portion of its foldable phones in South Korea, where it is headquartered. To be sure, I did encounter a good number of foldables in the wild when I visited Korea last summer for a meeting with Samsung and to watch the introduction of the Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5, frequently while taking advantage of the country’s excellent mass transit system. Three-quarters, I would guess. Generally speaking, all passengers were using Samsung phones. I observe that 80–90% of the individuals on the train in the US are using iPhones.
Currently, businesses like Google and OnePlus are working to create the foldable industry rather than entering an already-existing one. The bleeding edge of mobile technology is still expensive, despite the abundance of fantastic options, designs, and capabilities, and this could be impeding market penetration.
But there’s more to it than that. The market might never develop as a legitimate phone market without an Apple iPhone or iPhone Fold. You may believe that I’m overstating Apple’s impact. Ultimately, Apple is not the world’s largest producer of phones.
The enormous, developing chance
As per Counterpoint Research, Samsung maintains a 4% lead over Apple, while Apple just surpasses Oppo+ (a group of manufacturers classified as ‘Others’ controls the highest global smartphone share).
Theoretically, foldable devices could eventually become widely accepted worldwide, if not dominate the market, thanks to Samsung’s global power, but Apple’s influence is based on more than just statistics. This is a psychographic impact that originates in the US market and then travels the world as a virtual kind of FOMO.
Should Apple release a folding iPhone in 2024, it would be the most anticipated smartphone announcement of the previous 24 months, and hordes of ardent Apple enthusiasts would queue up outside glass-enclosed retail stores worldwide just to get a glimpse of one.
Although Samsung’s foldable device would be different and possibly better, I’m not saying that Apple would definitely perform any better than Samsung. However, the mere fact that an iPhone Fold would be available would revolutionize the foldable market.
Furthermore, it appears unlikely that 2024 will see the release of Apple’s first foldable iPhone, therefore that year will not be known as the year of the foldable.
Apple has other ideas.
Industry expert and genius Ming-Chi Kuo forecast a few years ago that Apple would enter the folding market as early as 2024. Kuo quickly changed his estimate, though, to “2025 at the earliest.”
Even the type of foldable device that Apple will likely release is up for debate. It could be an iPad mini or standard-sized iPad Fold, or it could be an iPhone Fold.
Tim Bajarin, chairman and analyst at Creative Strategies and a seasoned Apple watcher, was blunt when I asked him about the likelihood of an Apple foldable phone in 2024. “It is quite low. Just not on their priority list,” he replied to my email, stating that this is an unproven market, as I had already surmised. “For Apple to jump in the technology needs to get better and more durable and prove to deliver many years of service,” he stated.
Apple will focus on advancing spatial computing throughout the year, leaving rivals to battle it out for the remaining foldable market share.
All of this is not meant to take away from the achievements of OnePlus, Google, Motorola, or Samsung. None of these folding phones will have a breakthrough year, but they are all great phones that will likely increase the market by a few percentage points in 2024. The market is too preoccupied with awaiting Apple.
