For five straight years, Samsung has owned the foldable phone market the way Apple once owned the smartphone. The Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip lines became synonymous with bendable screens, and Samsung's early bet on flexible glass and hinge engineering gave it a head start that analysts swore was unassailable. But the ground is shifting under Seoul's feet, and the company's fourth-quarter earnings call in January revealed something the cheerleaders in tech media glossed over: foldable shipments missed internal targets, and management quietly blamed "intensifying competition."
That competition isn't just Huawei, which reclaimed the top spot in global foldable shipments in 2024 despite U.S. sanctions, or Xiaomi and Honor, whose book-style foldables undercut Samsung on price in Europe and Asia. The real threat is the shadow Apple has cast over the entire category for years without shipping a single foldable. Every rumor cycle, every patent filing, every supply-chain whisper about an "iPhone Fold" freezes buyers at the high end. Why spend $1,800 on a Z Fold 6 when the phone in your pocket already does everything, and the iPhone version is supposedly two years away?
Samsung's response has been telling. Instead of innovating its way out, it's been cutting. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 shipped with a 4,400 mAh battery—smaller than the Fold 5. The camera system was recycled. The S Pen, once a differentiator, now requires a separate case that blocks the charging coil. Reviewers noticed. Consumers noticed more. Meanwhile, the Z Flip 6 raised prices in some markets while offering marginal upgrades. This is not what market leadership looks like. This is what complacency looks like when a company believes its moat is deeper than it is.
Here's the part the tech press won't say plainly: Samsung's foldable dominance was never about superior products. It was about being first and being alone. First movers in hardware almost always lose their edge once the category matures, because scale, supply chains, and software ecosystems matter more than novelty. Apple has all three in spades, and it has spent the last decade building the silicon, the display partnerships, and the developer relationships that a foldable iPhone would need. When Apple finally ships one—and the supply chain signals point to a 2026 or 2027 window—it won't need to be better than Samsung's fifth-generation foldable. It will just need to be an iPhone.
The deeper story is what this reveals about Samsung's strategic culture. The company that once took real risks on curved OLEDs, edge displays, and the original Galaxy Fold has become cautious, iterative, and obsessed with protecting margins. That's a classic innovator's dilemma: the market leader optimizes, the challenger disrupts. Apple, for all its reputation as a fast follower, is patient enough to let Samsung spend billions educating consumers about why foldables matter, then swoop in with a polished product and a marketing budget Samsung can't match.
There's also a geopolitical angle nobody in Silicon Valley wants to touch. Samsung's foldable business depends on components and assembly capacity that increasingly overlap with Chinese supply chains. If a U.S.-China tech decoupling accelerates, Samsung could find itself squeezed between American export controls and Chinese retaliation, while Apple—with its aggressive India and Vietnam diversification—sidesteps the worst of it.
None of this means Samsung is doomed. It still ships more foldables than anyone, and its vertically integrated display arm, Samsung Display, supplies panels to rivals including Apple. But market leadership is a lagging indicator. By the time the numbers show decline, the strategic battle is already lost.
The truth is simpler and more uncomfortable than the fanboys on either side admit: Samsung taught the world to want foldables, and Apple will teach the world to buy them. That's not a knock on Samsung. It's just what happens when the innovator gets comfortable and the predator finally stops circling.