2025 may not be the year of the folding phone, but if Apple finally enters space in 2026, we could be in a great change.
That is the last message of Counterpoint Research analysts, who explained that 2024 was a year of almost imperceptible folding growth and, probably more worrying, 2025 will be reduced slightly.
The counterpoint research has been playing this bell since the end of last year when it produced a similar report. Now, almost five months after the year, they do not see signs that 2025 will even meet the flat sales numbers of 2024. It is likely to be a frustrating turn of the events for Samsung, Google, Oppo, Huawei and Motorola, all of which are now deeply invested in the category.
In general, folding phones have never represented more than 2% of the entire smartphone market. A factor that could be retaining the folding market is the price. Some of the best folding phones cost double that of a standard flagship.
Many of these companies have not yet made a convincing use case for folding phones, apart from “Do you want to have a small tablet in your pocket that does not occupy more space than a standard phone?” [Author’s Note: Yes. Yes, I do]
While consumers remain without inspiration, technological companies do not seem less inverted in the category. Recent entrances of honor and Oppo are helping to increase the small market share of the smartphone category of folding phones, but especially outside the United States.
Folding phones will not disappear from our digital landscape. In fact, counterpoint research indicates that the market is preparing for resurgence.
“It is definitely not a sign of the market scope; rather it is a sign of regrouping before 2026, which is expected to be exciting and rejuvenating for the segment with the entry of Apple and a large number of clams,” wrote the senior counterpoint analyst Jene Park.
Most rumors now point to Apple entering the folding market in 2026, which is a lynchpin of this resurgence.
It is a family history.
The Play Book of the Apple Products category is usually one in which he sees other players staggering with ballball and poor participants. Then you meet something beautiful and apparently obvious, a product that captivates consumers and the media.
It happened with MP3 players around the change of the century (iPod) and later with smartphones centered on the screen (iPhone) and then tablets (iPad). In each case, Apple was not at all the first, but it quickly became the best and most desirable.
However, folding are somewhat different, because although the market is stagnant, products are usually considered excellent. Of course, Samsung, Google and others have not become favors by not always putting the best absolute cameras and technology on each folding phone. Even so, these are excellent and versatile devices.
I have tried the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and I love each of them. They are well constructed, thin, relatively light, powerful, full of and generally fun to use as phones and as small tablets.
Yes, they can be prohibitively expensive, but you know that prices will eventually fall.
Apple’s entrance, however, will prove to be a game change. I bet even Samsung, Google and others are desperate because they enter the fray and revise the market. Counterpoint Research believes that a 2026 iPhone fold will quickly eat a considerable part of the small folding telephone market, but it will also expand it instantly.
I tend to agree with them. When I executed an anecdotal survey in X asking who consumers could buy a smartphone, Apple led the field with Samsung, which has been in space more time than any other company, a second close.
Most rumors assume that, although Apple will bring many avant -garde characteristics such as a liquid metal hinge and an extremely thin chassis probably borrowed from the rumored air of the iPhone 17, it will not reduce the bar at the price. Most think that the iPhone fold could be in the range of $ 2,000.
That is a lot, I don’t vision much, but it will mean that a simple exchange of iPhone 16 Pro will not be enough to cover most costs. You will have a high monthly payment for the pleasure of possessing Apple’s first folding, and still, I think people will gladly pay so much for an iPhone fold.
There is the possibility that Apple can go with a slightly different design direction with its iPhone fold, and instead of pursuing the Z Fold 6 and other folding tablets, it could offer a true CLAMSHELL.
Folded, the iPhone Fold X would be the size of a Z Flip 6 (but thinner). Deployed, it would be the size of an Ultra Delgado iPhone, so the thinness of an iphone 17 air, but the size of an iPhone 16 of 6.1 inches.
That would be attractive on two fronts: a more portable factor and probably a much more attractive price.
For now, it is a waiting game. Apple has not hinted at its folding plans, and there are no indications of a flexible surprise phone that present in September. But WWDC 2025, the next Apple developer conference, is just weeks away, and could be the perfect platform to make fun of those plans.
Such movement could turn the fortune of 2025 folding or depress them even more, since the most potential folding clients decide to stop until Apple finally sends the iPhone fold.
