Samsung's Foldable Empire Is Crumbling And Apple Smells Blood

Remember when Samsung convinced us all that foldable phones were the future? The Galaxy Fold launched in 2019 with a crease you could see from space, a price tag that required a second mortgage, and a screen that broke if you looked at it wrong. Fast forward to 2025, and the foldable market is a bloodbath. Samsung's once-commanding lead has shrunk faster than my 401k during a tariff announcement, and the vultures are circling. Apple hasn't even shipped a foldable yet, and somehow that's the scariest thing for Samsung's shareholders. Here's the brutal math. Samsung controlled over 80% of the foldable market in 2022. By late 2024, that number had slid to somewhere in the 50s, depending on whose analyst you trust. Huawei is eating Samsung's lunch in Asia with thinner, cheaper book-style foldables. Honor, Xiaomi, and Motorola are all cranking out devices that undercut the Galaxy Z Fold on price while matching or beating it on specs. The Galaxy Z Flip? Cute, but the novelty wore off around the time everyone realized the crease still looks like a cheap air mattress. And now the elephant in the room. Apple has been quietly filing patents, poaching display engineers, and reportedly working on a foldable iPhone that could launch as early as 2026 or 2027. The company that showed up five years late to the smartphone party and still ate everyone's lunch is about to do it again. Apple doesn't need to be first. It needs to be best. And Samsung knows it. The real problem is that Samsung got comfortable. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 was a $1,900 phone with a 4,400 mAh battery and charging speeds that would embarrass a midrange Android from 2020. The camera system hasn't meaningfully improved in three generations. Meanwhile, Chinese competitors are shipping foldables that are thinner than a pencil, have bigger batteries, and cost hundreds less. Samsung is charging a luxury tax for a brand name and a stylus that you have to buy separately. That's not innovation. That's a subscription service with extra steps. Apple's rumored foldable isn't going to be cheap. It'll probably cost $2,000 or more. But Apple has something Samsung lost: patience and ecosystem lock-in. When Apple releases a foldable iPhone, every iMessage-blue-bubble warrior in America will upgrade on day one. Developers will flock to it. Samsung will be left holding a bag of creased screens and a shrinking market share. The writing is on the wall. Samsung needs to stop resting on its laurels and actually innovate again. Drop the price. Fix the crease. Improve the battery. Give people a reason to choose Galaxy over an iPhone that bends. Otherwise, the foldable king is about to get dethroned by a company that hasn't even shown up to the fight yet. **Closing opinion:** Samsung had a five-year head start and somehow managed to build a moat made of wet paper towels. Apple doesn't need to reinvent the foldable — it just needs to show up with a better one and let the cult do the rest. Enjoy your victory lap while it lasts, Tim Cook.