With total unit shipments calculated at ~14.2 million for the whole of 2022, foldables have yet to take over in the smartphone market, as OEMs such as Samsung might hope for its Galaxy Z Fold and Flip lines. Nevertheless, the sector has been found to have had only 1 instance of quarter-on-quarter declines in numbers thus far.
Furthermore, that was for the last quarter of 2022 (4Q2022), and, thus, probably dragged down by the poor performance of smartphone sales in general. Accordingly, Canalys still projects that the market for foldables will only keep growing, to the tune of about 30 million unit shipped in 2023.
Accordingly, that would be roughly twice what they were for the whole of 2022. Samsung was found to be responsible for just under 12 million of those, with Huawei trailing as a runner-up in these rankings with about 2 million.
Other brands such as OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi and Honor did indeed compete in this arena in the same year, all with devices of remarkably advanced specs and features, despite only being in their first or second generations in most cases. However, none of those companies managed to crack the million-shipment mark; in fact, Motorola only managed to record ~40,000 units sold in 2022.
Therefore, it will now be very interesting to see if the 3rd-gen Razr, with all of its rumored improvements, will do any better – not to mention what might happen to Samsung’s market share should Google truly wade on in with its inaugural Pixel Fold this year.
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I became a professional writer and editor shortly after graduation. My degrees are in biomedical sciences; however, they led to some experience in the biotech area, which convinced me of its potential to revolutionize our health, environment and lives in general. This developed into an all-consuming interest in more aspects of tech over time: I can never write enough on the latest electronics, gadgets and innovations. My other interests include imaging, astronomy, and streaming all the things. Oh, and coffee.
