Samsung Is Ready To Take Advantage of Its First-Mover Advantage in Foldable Smartphones.

A market sector that is expected to grow tenfold by 2023.

This is a sign that does not deceive. At the end of 2021, two of the world's leading mobile manufacturers, the Chinese Huawei and Oppo, are releasing a foldable smartphone model. This is a new iteration for Huawei, which had been among the pioneers of the sector back in 2019 with its Mate X.

But the release of the Huawei P50 Pocket, despite the American sanctions, shows that the Chinese giant does not intend to let go of this buoyant segment. And the arrival of Oppo reinforces the point. With its “Find N”, the Chinese group has just joined the small group of foldable smartphone manufacturers, which already included Samsung, Motorola, and Xiaomi.

Of course, the two new devices are currently only available in China. And the prices remain high ($1,400 for the P50 Pocket, $1,200 for the Find N). But manufacturers and analysts agree: the future looks foldable.

A tenfold increase by 2023 for this market sector

This success has a lot to do with Samsung's efforts. The world's number one smartphone maker made a very risky bet in 2019 with its first Galaxy Fold. The limited sales of the first two versions of the range did not discourage the chaebol.

Three years later, Samsung's persistence is starting to pay off. Launched in the summer of 2021, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Flip 3, foldable in the width direction and height direction respectively, marked an inflection point for the South Korean giant. No less than 920,000 units had been pre-ordered according to Samsung.

In mid-September, Samsung crossed the million-unit mark in South Korea, only 39 days after its launch. This is its third-best performance for a smartphone, behind the Note 10 and the Galaxy S8. Since then, all analysts' figures agree on the rapid growth of the segment. According to several firms, the number of foldable smartphones shipped between July and September 2021 was multiplied by three compared to the previous quarter to reach 2.6 million units.

That number is now expected to approach 4 million over the last three months of the year, as the foldable smartphone sector makes its way under the Christmas tree for the holiday season. And by 2023, the number of foldable smartphones coming to market is expected to increase tenfold, according to Counterpoint Research.

Samsung's daring bet with foldable smartphones is reminiscent of the one successfully attempted in 2011 with phablets

As in 2011 when it invented the phablet segment - smartphones with very large screens - Samsung is playing on hardware differentiation to keep its crown as a premium manufacturer. The goal is to continue to challenge Apple, its major competitor at the top of the range. And here we can praise Samsung's audacity, which is always looking to innovate by taking risks, unlike Apple, which is content to manage its war chest in this area.

Well aware of a new trend that is emerging in the world of smartphones, Apple has tested according to the agency Bloomberg foldable iPhone. However, the firm led by Tim Cook has not yet announced its intentions in this area. Apple, therefore, lets Samsung evangelize the market alone.

On the other hand, the South Korean firm has been able to count on the support of Google, which has adapted its Android operating system to the new formats invented by Samsung. This was necessary so that developers could then create applications that would take advantage of all the new possibilities offered by foldable smartphones. Developers eventually followed suit, modifying their applications to offer new features. For example, email applications allow foldable smartphones to display a reading preview on the right side of the screen, just like on a personal computer.

But if consumers have finally followed, it is also because manufacturers, starting with Samsung, have been able to reassure on the robustness of these models. Even more than robustness, it is the price that has been a determining factor in the greater adoption of these foldable smartphones in 2021. With competition starting to grow in this new market segment, prices have started to drop. Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 3 was the first to drop below the psychological $1,000 mark.

The competition between Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo in the months to come could push these new devices into the mid-range and further accelerate their democratization.

If the growth of the sector will accelerate strongly in the future, Counterpoint Research estimated that Samsung will be the firm that should benefit the most. The South Korean company should retain three-quarters of this new market in 2023. A fair reward for a company that never stops innovating and that would take advantage of its first-mover advantage in the field.