For years, Samsung owned the foldable phone market outright. The Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip lines were the only serious options for anyone who wanted a screen that bent. Apple sat on the sidelines, watching. Google dipped a toe. Everyone else stayed home. That era is officially over.
The numbers tell a story the marketing departments would rather you skip. Samsung's share of the global foldable market has slid from a near-monopoly to somewhere around half — and dropping. Huawei, once dismissed as a regional player, now outsells Samsung in China's foldable segment. Honor, Motorola, and Xiaomi have all shipped devices that undercut Samsung on price while matching it on specs. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 was met with a collective shrug from reviewers who noted it was barely an upgrade over the Fold 5. When you're charging $1,800 for a phone, "barely an upgrade" is a death sentence.
Here's where the Apple angle gets interesting. Tim Cook has spent years insisting Apple won't ship a product until it's ready. That's the official line. The unofficial line, whispered among supply chain analysts, is that Apple has been prototyping foldables since at least 2018. Patents have surfaced for everything from self-healing displays to hinge mechanisms that fold both ways. The company is clearly working on something. The question is whether Samsung's stumble gives Apple an opening — or whether Apple's entrance is what's causing the stumble in the first place.
Think about it. Samsung's foldable business depends on premium buyers. Those are exactly the people most likely to switch to an Apple foldable the moment one exists. Samsung knows this. It's why the company has been slashing prices, pushing trade-in deals, and flooding the zone with mid-range foldables like the Z Flip FE. It's playing defense against a product that doesn't officially exist yet.
And it's not just Apple. The real structural problem is that foldables have never escaped the novelty tier. Durability concerns persist. Creases are still visible. App developers still treat the form factor as an afterthought. Samsung spent six generations trying to make foldables feel normal, and they still feel like a flex — literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, the broader smartphone market has plateaued, and consumers are holding onto phones longer than ever. A $1,800 device with a fragile hinge is a tough sell in that environment.
There's also a geopolitical layer most coverage ignores. Samsung's foldable dominance was partly a function of Huawei being kneecapped by US sanctions. That pressure hasn't disappeared, but Huawei has adapted — building its own chips, its own OS, its own supply chain. In China, patriotism plus decent hardware equals market share. Samsung can't compete with that. In the US and Europe, Samsung's real rival is inertia: people who see no reason to pay flagship prices for a bendy screen.
So what happens when Apple finally ships a foldable? Two scenarios. One: Apple executes flawlessly, prices it at $2,000+, and instantly becomes the default premium foldable, crushing Samsung's margins. Two: Apple waits too long, the category fizzles, and everyone moves on to AI glasses or whatever the next shiny object is. Either way, Samsung loses. The only question is how badly.
The company that invented the category is now the company most threatened by it. That's not irony. That's what happens when you mistake a head start for a moat.
**The takeaway:** Samsung built a foldable empire on being the only game in town. Apple is about to prove that being first means nothing if you can't stay interesting. Watch the supply chain leaks — they'll tell you more about Apple's foldable timeline than any keynote ever will.