Samsung's Foldable Lead Is Shrinking Fast — samsung foldable…

For five years, Samsung has owned the foldable phone market the way Apple once owned the smartphone. It launched the Galaxy Z Fold and Flip lines, absorbed the early ridicule about creases and cracked screens, and kept iterating while rivals watched from the sidelines. That era is ending. Samsung's share of global foldable shipments has slid from north of 80% to roughly half, according to market trackers, and the company's latest earnings call sounded less like a victory lap and more like a warning. The reason is simple: everyone else finally showed up. Huawei's Mate X series now outsells Samsung's foldables in China, the world's largest phone market. Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo have all shipped book-style foldables that are thinner and often cheaper than the Z Fold. Google's Pixel Fold gave American buyers a real alternative with better software polish. Even OnePlus jumped in with the Open, undercutting Samsung by hundreds of dollars. Then there's the elephant in Cupertino. Apple has stayed out of foldables entirely — no product, no confirmed timeline, just a steady drip of patent filings and supply-chain rumors. Analysts expect a foldable iPhone as early as 2026 or 2027, and that's precisely what makes Samsung's position so uncomfortable. Apple doesn't need to be first. It needs to be best, and it has a habit of letting rivals spend years educating customers before it strolls in and takes the premium tier. The stakes go beyond bragging rights. Foldables are the only part of the premium phone market still growing, and they carry fat margins. Samsung's mobile division has leaned on the Z line to justify $1,800 price tags while its standard Galaxy S sales flatten. If Huawei keeps winning China and Apple eventually owns the high end everywhere else, Samsung becomes the middle child — too expensive to fight budget Android rivals, not prestigious enough to beat Apple. Samsung isn't standing still. The Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6 arrived with slimmer bodies, better hinges, and heavy AI features. The company has teased a double-folding design and cheaper flip models to widen the audience. But iterative upgrades are a defensive move, not a knockout punch. Here's the part that should worry Samsung most: the foldable category itself is stalling. Shipments have grown far slower than the double-digit leaps analysts predicted a few years ago. Durability complaints persist. App developers still treat the inner screen as an afterthought. Most people who can afford a foldable simply buy a normal flagship and a tablet instead. Apple may not fix those problems, but it will absolutely exploit them. A foldable iPhone wouldn't just compete with Samsung — it would instantly become the default choice for anyone already living in the Apple ecosystem, which in the U.S. is most of the premium market. Samsung's real fear isn't losing a few points of share. It's losing the narrative that it's the only company serious about foldables. For now, Samsung remains the volume leader and the only brand with a mature foldable lineup across multiple price points. That's a genuine advantage. But advantages decay, and the competition just stopped being polite about it. **The takeaway:** Samsung proved foldables could work. The next chapter is about who profits from them, and the answer increasingly looks like it won't be the company that built the market — it'll be the one that shows up last with the best product.