Smartphone shipment growth has been hard to come by over the last few years as the market has become saturated with ~120 brands, of which ~48 have trackable share on mobile networks.  Feature sets such as networks (4G, 5G, etc.), display size and type, chipsets, cameras, and battery size and life, have become so generic among new models that something as mundane as a new smartphone body color can spike sales for a short period, while OLED displays, once remanded to the very top of the flagship smartphone market, are now getting close to having a 50% share of the total smartphone market, which leaves brands at a loss for the differentiation that could attract customers.
Foldable smartphones have created a ‘new’ feature category that continues to grow from its onset in 2019, and as the technology continues to improve, should continue to grow and capture premium pricing.  At this relatively early stage in the smartphone foldable market, there are few brands and relatively few offerings as can be seen in Figure 1 with Samsung (005930.KS) the dominant brand and among the category’s biggest supporter given its semi-captive display supplier Samsung Display (pvt).  That said, China’s Huawei (pvt) has also been a competitor and has been gaining global share as it continues an active foldable release schedule that rivals Samsung's, and newer Chinese foldable entrants, such as Oppo (pvt), Vivo (pvt), Xiaomi (1810.HK), and Honor (pvt), have recently entered the market with their own offerings.
Logic holds that Samsung’s dominant share of the foldable smartphone market, which has been as high as 95% in some periods, is going to decline as more entrants eat away at that customer base, but nowhere is that more evident than in the world’s largest smartphone market, China, where Samsung is a relatively small player overall.  While the Chinese smartphone market is experiencing the same unit volume contraction that is seen globally (Figure 2 & Figure 3), domestic brands still maintain a trend line share of ~85% (Figure 4) and according to data from Counterpoint Huawei is the dominant foldable smartphone brand in the domestic Chinese market. (Figure 5) currently, while Samsung’s Mainland share has declined from 25% to 15% since the beginning of the year.
As the number of foldable smartphone offerings both globally and in China is still quite small, share calculations are very dependent on the timing of new releases and at least a portion of Samsung’s smartphone foldable share  decline in China can be attributed to both its and Huawei’s release schedules.  Huawei released its latest foldable, the Xs2 in April, a full size foldable, and the P50 Pocket, a lower priced clamshell foldable last December, while Samsung’s last offerings (Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip) were released in August of last year, so while Samsung’s foldable China share will likely continue to decline as local competition increases, we would expect to see some share improvement when the new line of Galaxy foldables is released in August.
As noted, the Chinese smartphone market remains domestically brand loyal, with some of that loyalty a reaction to the US trade sanctions against Huawei and ZTE (000063.CH) that have stymied their growth outside of the Mainland, however the foldable smartphone market is new and additional display suppliers and brand offerings will become available over the next few years with the potential for Apple (AAPL) to enter the foldable market in 2024 or 2025, which will have considerable influence over share, as in new release quarters, the iPhone can have a dominant share both globally and in China.  While there is considerable speculation about Apple’s foldable plans, we expect Apple is far more interested in developing a foldable that would not require the user to compromise on display quality and would provide some more specific device functionality (triple-fold, scroll, etc.), rather than to join the foldable market just to be competitive.
All of that said, we believe the real test for the foldable smartphone market is functionality, as we expect the foldable premium currently available to smartphone brands will evaporate relatively quickly as more foldable panel suppliers enter the market, particularly China’s BOE (200725.CH) who has been a foldable display supplier to Huawei and has shown a wide variety of foldable prototypes and demos over the last year.  BOE will compete with primary smartphone foldable panel supplier SDC by offering a comparable product at a lower price, as it has in almost all of its other display segments, eventually forcing SDC to use its foldable production experience to generate new form factors that will increase the appeal of foldables to consumers.  We don’t consider foldable devices to worth a premium unless they provide functionality over existing smartphones, so while we expect the category to continue to grow, we expect the novelty to wear off and premiums to evaporate unless smartphone brands can utilize ‘foldability’ to create devices that radically improve the customer’s experience.

While Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), might not have been the first to release a foldable device, they certainly have been the category’s biggest proponent.  With the company expected to release its 3rd generation foldable series next month, there is little about the Z4 line that is not already known, other than price, although speculation is that both models will remain at the same price as the previous iteration.  That said, what about the Galaxy Fold 5 and Flip 5, which will not be released for over a year?  Yes, there is already the beginnings of conjecture about that next generation of foldable smartphones, even before the previous version is out.
The Galaxy Fold 5 and Flip 5 are expected to be based on Qualcomm’s (QCOM) Snapdragon 8550 chipset (aka Snapdragon 8 Gen 2), a 4um node device produced by Taiwan Semi (TSM) to be released later this year as an upgrade to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, which was recently released.  This has also brought on speculation that Samsung will no longer use its own Exynos processor in the foldables (and potentially other mobile devices) as the Snapdragon specs have bypassed those of the Exynos.  But there is one aspect of the Flip/Fold 5 that is unusual, and that is Samsung’s unit volume targets, which are expected to be quite low and are seemingly reflecting a dour picture of the smartphone or CE environment in 2023.
As shown in the table below, we believe Samsung shipped 7.11m foldable units in 2021.  Samsung originally set a target of 10m units for this year but increased that to 15m units earlier this year.  Thus far we have not heard that the target for this year has changed, and, if the release date of August is correct, production of those units has been underway since late May or early June, especially considering the difficulties associated with shipping that CE companies are currently facing.  As production for the Galaxy Fold/Flip will continue through the end of the year, there is stil time for Samsung to reduce the number of units once they see whether the macro environment is affecting foldable sales. 
That said, the trade press in Korea is stating that Samsung has already set its unit volume targets for the Galaxy Fold/Flip Series 5, tobe released in August 2023, but at a considerably lower target (10m units) than one might expect given Samsung’s hopes for growth in the foldable smartphone category. This could be a reflection of Samsung’s 2023 macro outlook or more likely in our view, a very conservative estimate that will likely be raised, a more positive timeline than one where targets have to be reduced.  We note also that the ratio between the two models in both 2021 and 2022 has been 3:7, while in 2023, it is 1:4, according to the same sources.  This implies that the Galaxy Flip 5 will see an increase in unit proportion against the more expensive Galaxy Z Fold 5. 
Again, without confirmation from Samsung, we expect this would reflect an anticipated decline in price for the Galaxy Z Flip, which would increase its customer base, while the Galaxy Z Fold remains near or at its current levels to preserve margins across the entire foldable smartphone line.  This also does not assume that Samsung will release any new foldable smartphone models, which we believe is certainly a possibility in 2023, so the speculation of over the Z Flip and Fold targets could be excluding other models that would bring the targets up to what would be more ‘growthy’ levels, especially as Samsung has stated that it expects to expand the foldable line over time.

​According to local Korean trade press, Samsung Electronics has initiated a program to develop a lower priced foldable smartphone for release in 2024.  With the concept of bringing the cost of a foldable down to 1m won (~$770 US) from the $960 to $1,550 (1.5m to 2m won) that such Samsung foldables cost last year by focusing on core functions, the company is hoping to widen its share of the foldable smartphone market and increase its own share of foldables across its smartphone lines.
As Samsung and other smartphone brands face competition from lower priced but fully featured Chinese smartphone brands, the impact on flagship models has been felt over the last two+ years, with Samsung’s best-selling phones being its Galaxy A series rather than the flagship Galaxy S series.  The Galaxy A series is priced between $180 and $450, while the Galaxy S Series is priced between $1,000 and $1,200 (Initial price).  While Samsung is expected to ship 15m foldables this year, up substantially from the 8m shipped last year, it is still under 6% of Samsung’s expected smartphone shipments this year. 
However with a share of just under 90% of the foldable market last year, Samsung needs to develop even larger volumes to maintain that very dominant share as other brands enter the market, and that would require a lower priced foldable to appeal to the more price conscious smartphone buyer as Samsung discovered when it lowered the price of the 2021 Galaxy Z Flip foldable to $999 last year.  That ~$200 price reduction over the previous year’s Galaxy Z Flip model made  last year’s Galaxy Z Flip the best-selling foldable model with a 52% share of the market. 
While we expect foldable display production costs to continue to decline, a less feature-rich foldable might be the key to bringing out a mid-priced foldable that will appeal to the top end Galaxy A Series customer without cannibalizing the more premium priced Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Z Fold.  As Apple is expected to enter the foldable market around the same time (2024), we expect Samsung’s ‘other’ motive for developing such a device would be to lessen the impact of Apple’s (AAPL) entry into the foldable market, which would likely have the most impact on the more expensive Samsung Galaxy foldables.  It will be tricky to create a less expensive device that still has enough features to warrant purchase without making it so attractive that it cuts into the Z Flip and Z Fold market, but we expect Samsung will do extensive customer testing before it makes such a step and will have a better understanding of the ‘foldable customer’ by then.
 

Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) is the volume leader in the smartphone space in most quarters, and as such is constantly being pressured by rivals to innovate their smartphone offerings, especially as smartphone display size reached a size where the device barely fit into a pocket.  Samsung Display (pvt), a Samsung affiliate, took the expertise it had developed in flexible OLED display production and applied it toward developing a commercial display that was flexible enough to fold without breaking.  While Samsung was not the first to develop such technology (others had demoed concept displays and prototypes in previous years), and was outdone by China’s Royole (pvt), who released the first foldable smartphone (developer version) in December 2018, after being announced earlier in the year.  Samsung released its first foldable smartphone in September 2019, the Galaxy Fold, after announcing the device at CES earlier that year.
The initial reviews of the Galaxy Fold were favorable from a technology point of view but not from a practical one, as problems with visible crease lines in the display caused many to set aside the technology in order to give Samsung time to fix the display issues.  As the company had already committed to the foldable concept they delayed the actual release date (April 2019) until they were able to make changes to the display and the fold hinge to reduce the crease.  While this gave hesitancy to consumers that might have been early adopters, especially the lengthy ‘care’ instructions given to consumers upon the final release, Samsung Display and its parent continued to push forward with the concept.
Since then Samsung has released at least two foldable smartphones each year and is expected to announce the 2022 versions in August, with delivery in September, and while there have been numerous ‘leaks’ and unsourced mock-ups about these next-generation foldables, the category continue to evolve.  Samsung’s biggest foldable competitor is Huawei (pvt), a Chinese company that is under severe US trade restrictions and is tacitly limited to selling its products in China, but in 2021, despite the poor performance of smartphone brands generally, two additional Chinese brands entered the foldable market with the Xiaomi (1810.HK) Mi Mix Fold, and the Oppo (pvt) Find N devices., and thus far in 2022 both Honor (pvt) and Vivo (pvt) (both Chinese brands) have already released their first foldable smartphones.
Much of this activity was generated when Samsung made a concerted effort to promote its foldable phones in 2H last year.  We believe that Samsung felt that enough time had passed from the initial, somewhat sketchy release in 2019, that they could safely assure the public that the durability of these devices had improved significantly, and sales jumped 273% q/q in 3Q ’21 and reached almost 8m units for the 2nd half, relative to a bit over 1m units in 1H.  While the unit volumes for Samsung’s foldable smartphones grew substantially in 2H last year, we note that they are miniscule relative to the roughly 690m mobile units that shipped during that period, but if nothing else, it generated considerable interest from consumers and competitors, and likely lit a fire under those brands that were already developing foldable offerings.
Despite Huawei, and the initial models from Xiaomi and Oppo, Samsung remained the dominant vendor in 2021, as seen in Figure 2, with an 88% share of the market based on unit volume, although a slightly lower share based on value, given Samsung’s Flip foldable line, which brought the price of foldables below $1,000.  Still, Samsung held an 85% share based on sales value, with the 2021 Galaxy Z Flip 3 capturing over 50% of total foldable smartphone unit volume for the year (Figure 4).  Not only did the big jump in volumes spark interest in foldable smartphones from competitors, but it also began a spate of foldable smartphone forecasts that we have compiled to garner some understanding of expectations for the foldable smartphone category going forward.
We note that while we aggregate estimates and forecasts, there are always outliers and some of the years further out might have only one or two forecasts, which would account for the unusual volume jump in 2025 and what would look like a decrease in the following year.  More likely those years would follow a more linear pattern as forecasts become more plentiful for those years.  While unit volumes are certainly a key to understanding the foldable smartphone segment, Samsung’s introduction of the ‘Flip’ model in 2020, and its price reduction in the following year had a significant effect on unit volumes but lowered the ASP across the category.  This is important in that it gives us some indication as to price points that will attract consumers to foldable smartphones in high enough volumes to make them a distinctive smartphone category, which was Samsung’s ultimate objective.
Based on available pricing data, we believe the weighted ASP for foldable smartphones in 2021 was $1,688, which would equate to foldable smartphone revenue of $15.3b.  If we go further and adjust for the ASP for each brand, that figure drops to $14.6b, as the lower priced offering from Samsung carries more weight than others.  That said, we would expect both the unweighted and weighted ASP to decline each year as Samsung increases manufacturing volumes and competitors move to large scale mass production.  That said, given that there is limited seasonal data for the category and that we are rather unsure of the reliability of forecasts in the out years, we hesitate to predict sales figures for the category at this time.  We do note that the first glimpse of foldable smartphone shipments for 1Q ’22 are massively ahead of 2021, although it is an easy compare, but we feel that by the end of 1H, we should have enough of an understanding of the ‘new’ seasonality for foldable smartphones that we might make more reliable estimates for the 2023 and 2024 years.  While we note that hesitation, we do give credit to Samsung for taking a nascent category and making it a viable product differentiator, a task that no other smartphone brand was able to do.  Kudos…

​Samsung Display is said to have begun placing orders for the components needed to produce its next line of foldable smartphones and has increased the unit volume expectations considerably over last year.  SDC will begin display production in June and will begin assembly in July, likely at its expanded facility in Vietnam, which has increased capacity by ~33%.  The initial component unit volume is expected to be be for between 15m and 18m units, doubling the 7m units the company produced last year, with ~70% for the Galaxy Z Flip and 30% for the Galaxy Z Fold.
Without reviewing the vast number of ‘leaks’, ‘influencer rants’, and idle speculation about what the new foldables will look like or contain hardware-wise, we expect relatively little change over last year’s models with the exception of the inclusion of a holder for the S-Pen on the Z Fold 4.  Display sizes should be almost if not exactly the same, with the possibility of some camera improvements and battery size changes, but most important will be the price, as last year Samsung was able to bring down the initial price of the Z Fold by $200. 
There has been some conjecture as to the lower profitability of the foldable line for Samsung, which is logical considering the maturity of Samsung’s flexible OLED production experience relative to its foldable production experience (although still the leader in foldable OLED), but we expect Samsung has been working toward bringing down the price for the Fold/Flip 4 line, even in an inflationary market in order to stimulate sales.  Perhaps a $200 price reduction (bringing the initial price of the Fold 4 to $1,600 from $1,800 last year) is a bit much to hope for but at least Samsung has the volumes needed to squeeze a bit more out of its foldable supply chain.
The last two foldable model years have seen announcements of the new line made in early to mid-August, which we expect will be the same this year, with release dates by the end of August or early September depending on transportation issues, but we expect this will be a more competitive year for foldables, despite Samsung’s considerable lead in the space, especially in China where Vivo (pvt) and Honor (pvt) have joined Huawei (pvt) and Oppo (pvt) with offerings this year.  There is also considerable buzz that Samsung will release a rollable smartphone device this year although we keep our expectations low for such a model this year.

​LG Display (LPL) has picked up a second customer for its foldable OLED displays, said to be supplying same to Hewlett Packard’s (HPE) 17” 4K foldable device expected late this year or early next, and will begin production in 3Q.  Unit volumes are expected to be small, but represent a 2nd foldable OLED display customer for LGD.  The company previously supplied foldable panels to Lenovo (992.HK) in 2020.  LGD displayed its 17” foldable 4K panel at CES earlier this year.  Polyimide cover film is expected to be used on the display, which will be supplied by SK IE Technology (361610.KS), a local material supply firm that is part of SK Holdings (034730.KS), a major energy conglomerate in South Korea.  It is said that SK IE bid 50% lower than competitors to win the project as the last project for which it supplied such material was for China’s Royole (pvt), whose volumes never improved and is now facing financial difficulties.

Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) is expected to begin production of its next foldable smartphone iterations this month for an announcement and (hopefully) release in August.  What will likely be called the Galaxy Z Fold 4 5G and the Galaxy Z Flip 4 5G will mark Samsung’s 4th entry into the foldable smartphone market, with only Huawe (pvt) having three iterations of a foldable smartphone product.  While we expect Huawei will likely have a new offering this year, despite the stringent US trade sanctions that have limited the company’s access to silicon foundries outside of China, two new Chinese competitors have entered the market over the last few months, with Oppo’s (pvt) Find N and Honor’s (pvt) Magic V being released late last year and in mid-January of this year respectively.
The competitive nature of the foldable smartphone market however is a bit less so than in the generic smartphone world where there are hundreds of active brands and almost 140 models released YTD and expectations for unit shipments range from ~1.3b to ~1.4b, while foldable smartphone shipments are expected to be between 14.5m and 17.1m units thus far.  That said, Samsung’s foldable offerings represented ~84% to 88% of the total market last year, and while that share might be reduced a bit this year as the new entrants gain some momentum, we expect Samsung will remain the dominant player in the space for 2022 with a target of 13m foldable units in 2022.
While Samsung is expected to remain the dominant player in the smartphone foldables market, as new competitors emerge, it will become increasingly important for Samsung to maintain competitive pricing for its foldables which typically carry a significant premium over competitive brands.  Justification for such premiums comes from Samsung’s experience in both display production, a function of its affiliate Samsung Display (pvt), its ability to develop or co-develop a number of key components in such devices. And its massive advertising campaigns.  That said, tablets that are in the 8” size tier range in price from as little as $89 to $150, although without 4G/5G connectivity, there is also a bit of price pressure from tablets, so we expect Samsung will be working toward keeping the price of the next generation foldable smartphones at the previous level or lower.
As the cost of the display will likely still be the most costly piece of the foldable BOM, the hinges which allow the phone to fold without creasing the display are also a high cost item that does not appear in a normal smartphone BOM.  Samsung Display (pvt) should be able to reduce the cost of the display as long as the specs don’t change drastically from last year (7.6”), so there has been some speculation that Samsung will eliminate one of the two hinges on the Fold 4 to reduce the device cost.  While there will still be rollers on either side of the folding mechanism, the hinge itself is now expected to be in the middle, similar to Huawei’s most recent foldable release, the P50. 
Samsung has been developing its hinge technology with KH Vatec (060720.KS), a precision casting company that specializes in foldable hinges among other metal smartphone products, and is said to have not only reduced the number of hinges on the new devices but to also have reduced the size, allowing the phones to fold more tightly, making it thinner overall, something consumers have mentioned as a drawback to foldables.  Whether this new hinge arrangement and the higher expected volumes for Samsung’s foldables this year will give the company room to lower the price while maintaining margins remain to be seen, but we expect that Samsung will either have to offer a new ‘model’ type foldable device this year, such as a ‘slider’, or push down the price of both existing models to generate increased unit volume this year.  The good news is that consumers seem to be able to trust that they will not have a device that will last for a year or two and need to be replaced, but that puts more pressure on price in order to gin up consumer interest to the next level.

​It is tough to compete against companies like Samsung, LG, Apple (AAPL) and Xiaomi (1810.HK) in the smartphone market, it is even harder if you are a ‘unicorn’ that came out of the chute with a ‘first’ that seems to have put to shame those who had such huge developmental resources.  Such was the case with Royole (pvt), a company founded by Bill Liu and a group of Stanford engineering graduates in 2012.  The company has received financing from a number of VCs totaling over $1.1b and was the first company to make available a foldable display, albeit only to developers. 
The company has been in the tech press many times as it released various odd-ball products  containing its flexible OLED displays but has been unable to gain real traction with smartphone brands, other than ZTE (000063.CH).  Royole submitted documentation to be admitted to the Shanghai STAR Exchange, but terminated the listing (Royole also failed to qualify for listing in the US in 2019) and rumors of missed payments to employees began to surface late last year as employees began to post on social media about the missing wages, with statements that September wages were only paid in part and no wages were paid in October.  At that time it was said that e-mails from the company’s founder stated that the company was working on financing and that wages would be paid in January of this year, with rumors of new financing raising the hopes of employees.  Some of the wage arrears were paid in January, with the promise the rest would be paid after the New Year festival, however that has yet to happen and what little information that is available about the company, seems to indicate that production and yields at the company’s OLED fab are so low that it would be difficult to attract additional financing.  While the company has partnered with a number of prominent luxury brands for one-off products, it seems that Royole is beginning to slip into the limbo where small display manufacturers who are unable to compete often go to slowly pass into display history.
  

We have written about foldable smartphones and other OLED devices numerous times over the last few years.  Now with 7 brands having foldable smartphones, the concept is no longer new to consumers and according to recent data, Samsung’s foldable sales are reaching levels that make the concept a more realistic mass production smartphone rather than a novelty.  Vivo (pvt) a sister company to China’s Oppo (pvt) and RealMe (pvt), all three of whom are owned by BBK Electronics (pvt), is expected to join the ‘foldables’ category next month with the Vivo X Fold.
The device is expected to have a form factor similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold (horizontal fold) with the main screen inside (when closed) and a large external display.  According to the most recent speculation the main display  (foldable) is being supplied by Samsung Display (pvt) the leader in the foldable display space, and the external display is expected to be supplied by China’s BOE (200725.CH), although the size of each remains unknown, and the chipset is likely Qualcomm’s (QCOM) Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or similar.  There is a chance that the fingerprint sensor will be mounted under the display, while the camera set-up is expected to be a single selfie cam and four cameras (50, 48, 12, 8MP) for photography, all powered by a 4,600 mAh battery.
The only problem with such a device is that Vivo’s phones are most popular in China or Southeast Asia, which means that the odds of this phone winding up in the US are very small, and while foldables are a new price category for most smartphone brands, Vivo tends to offer phones in the low to mid-priced category, so we expect such a Vivo foldable will have to find an audience that is different from its usual while facing competition from Samsung in regions where it has a relatively small presence, a task that is a challenge for all foldable brands.  While we have seen data as to Vivo’s share in a number of countries as high as 36.7%, those numbers must be adjusted to the population of the countries involved and then to the number of active smartphone users.  Based on just population alone Vivo sells the vast majority (over 80%) of phones sold outside of China to India and Indonesia where the two best-selling smartphones are the Xiaomi Redmi 9 Power and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro which sell for ~$211 and $290 respectively so a foldable in the $900+ price range (expected) will have limited appeal to Vivo’s existing customer base outside of China.
With a foldable expected from Google this year and the potential for an Apple foldable in 2023/2024, the foldable smartphone is looking to find its way into the mass market smartphone business, especially given the potential for premium pricing, something every smartphone brand is looking for in such a competitive market.  Hopefully many of the technology issues that caused problems for consumers in the early days of foldables are now completely or almost completely solved, but we expect that by the time Apple is ready to enter the foldable market, the novelty will have worn off with consumers and the objective will be to find foldables that solve consumer problems rather than fold nicely. 
Triple fold smartphones (see our note 8/31/21) give users a large image space for viewing movies or playing games, while flip type foldables bring phone sizes down to something that fits anywhere, but we always come back to a smartphone with a scrolling display, one that can be pulled out of the side of the phone to become a 6” by 12” or even 18” screen that would mimic a newspaper or magazine.  There are lots of challenges in producing such a device (How do you keep the display flexible enough to be coiled but rigid enough to stay open?) and many that we have yet to think off, but while consumers have become conditioned to watching things on a small screen, foldable should be able to change that to something more akin to a display that doesn’t force you to lean forward to catch important scene movement or force cinematographers to envision what a set or exterior shot will look like on a 6” diagonal screen.  Technology is supposed to be used to solve problems or at the least to make life easier, which gives foldable designers, who are barely constrained by historic convention, the ability to experiment as the technology develops.  Hopefully it doesn’t wind up in the same rut as regular smartphones where more ‘stuff’ means higher prices until consumers find little value in multiple cameras or more pixels and start the inevitable price decline cycle.  The field is open for foldables but using it as just another gimmick would be a true waste..  

Foldable devices are here and continue to become more commonplace, with Samsung Electronics (013570.KS) leading the charge.  Using foldables as the high-end tier in its smartphone lineup and having direct access to the leader in foldable OLED display panel production, Samsung Display (pvt), it is easy to see why Samsung has taken the reins on this device type and pushed it into the forefront of the smartphone world, especially given the premium pricing the category maintains.  But there are worries in the industry that premium pricing for foldable smartphones is already beginning to decline and some fear that the premium will be quickly washed away as competitors, particularly those in China, begin to fill out the category.
Not to take things at face value, we decided to check to see whether foldable smartphone pricing had moved significantly over the last year or so by looking at pricing on Amazon (AMZN), although we are limited to Samsung’s line in most cases as most Chinese brands are not offered on Amazon.  In each case we tried to find the lowest priced model (least memory in most cases) and an unlocked phone (no carrier) as the representative for that brand.  We do note that currently Wal-Mart (WMT) is offering the Galaxy Z Fold 3 5G for $1,500 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G for $800, both at discounts to the current price on Amazon, but both are limited time deals and not permanent prices.
Based on the data below, there has been relative little change in foldable smartphone prices, with the low point for most being during the November and December holiday season, with only the almost two year old Galaxy Z Flip seeing a substantial price drop.  The most recent releases from Samsung, the Z Fold 3 5G and the Z Flip 5G are down 11.1% and 7.0% from their original prices, but are still considerably above their lows set in December of 2021.  While we have seen recent headlines stating that “Foldable smartphone prices are falling rapidly”, at least for now, the data disagrees.