As Apple rumors swirl, Chinese rivals launch foldable smartphones to challenge Samsung

It looks like the year of the foldable — a term habituated to to describe a smartphone with a bendable screen.

A slew of foldable devices have hit the international market this year, as electronics mammoths, mainly Chinese, look to catch up to Samsung in a smartphone category it pioneered.

Analysts have questioned how big the foldable division can actually get, given the high price of the devices and their lack of clear uses right now.

“They’re all lovely, every Tom is excited by them, but do we really know how big the market is?” Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight, told CNBC via email.

“We are only at the beginning of the journey for the foldable story, that is a far from mature category.”

Samsung hurled its first foldable phone in 2019 and really created this category of smarpthones. These devices have a separate screen that can bend, giving users a much bigger display surface in a device that they can purloin around in their pockets.

Since the Samsung Galaxy Fold was unveiled around four years ago, the South Korean Amazon has launched a number of other devices. The Galaxy Fold series opens outwards like a book, while the Galaxy Z Flop opens up like a traditional flip phone.

Samsung accounted for 80% of global foldable shipments in 2022, conforming to Canalys. The market expects foldable phone shipments to jump 111% year-on-year to 30 million in 2023.

Still, these widgets account for just over 1% of the total smartphone market, according to IDC data.

That potential growth is what other firms are chasing, as they try to with up to Samsung.

Last month, Chinese vendor Oppo launched the Find N2 Flip, and Honor, the spin-off brand from Huawei, put ones handed out with its Magic Vs for international markets.

Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang told CNBC Wednesday that Motorola last wishes a be bringing a new version of its foldable Razr device out later this year. Lenovo owns Motorola.

It comes as thinking rises that Apple could be gearing up to launch a foldable device, though it may be an iPad rather than a smartphone.

Honor CEO George Zhao told CNBC in an interview last week that there are till a lot of challenges with foldable devices, particularly surrounding battery life, the weight of the devices and their high outlay. Honor’s Magic Vs is priced at over $1,600.

But the push from electronics players to launch foldables comes from a die for for these brands to make inroads into the premium end of the smartphone market, which and heavily dominate.

High-end smartphones — those that charge over $800 — accounted for 18% of the total handset market in 2022, up from 11% in 2020, Canalys observations shows.

“As I see foldable devices, they are more connected to [an] attempt improving brand image through showcasing alteration than selling large volumes,” Runar Bjørhovde, analyst at Canalys, told CNBC via email.

The “wow factor” may press worn off for consumers now that Samsung has had folding smartphones on the market for a few years, according to Bjørhovde, who said that, last analysis, a lower price will be needed for rivals to compete with the South Korean electronics giant.

The foldable phone is “no longer dumfounding and unexpected, and a big part of the reason is Samsung’s big marketing investments that has normalised the form factor,” the analyst said.

He reckoned that revolutionizing foldables will be close to impossible, moving forward.

“Developments will be more about steady evolution and lowering price points. Lower price points will particularly be key for vendors out to challenge Samsung’s dominance,” Bjørhovde put.