The Korean giant has a good reason to continue investing its efforts in the premium category of the smartphone world – while the Chinese competitors still have a long way to go, while Motorola and Lenovo have reasons to consider retirement
A recent report on the website of the Financial Times confirms what we could all cautiously estimate – Samsung’s Fold and Flip devices that first entered our lives a little over four years ago dominate this category by a heavy hand, with sales of close to 12 million units of each The models during the year 2022.
Sales of foldable smart devices of all types and sizes stood at 14.2 million units during the year 2022, and the Korean manufacturer was responsible for more than 80 percent of all of them – while the Chinese Huawei was the one that settled for second place with sales of just under 2 million units for A pair of its Mate Xs models and the Pocket S model that continues to hold as the most popular foldable (if you don’t consider the actual market prices of old models left in stock).
Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and Honor were all satisfied with modest sales of only a few hundred thousand units, while Motorola recorded sales of an extremely small volume of only 40,000 units, even though it already has three generations of the Razr under its belt and marketing the models in the West (which does not exist as of today with some of the competitors on the list).
Does this mean that Motorola and Lenovo should soon abandon the fantasies (or illusions) about the revival of the successful brand from the past, or is there still room for some hope? In the meantime, there are already rumors about another updated model for 2023 (with an enlarged external screen that surrounds a pair of cameras and the device’s LED flash), so there will probably be at least one more opportunity for the long-awaited comeback.
The current estimates are that, despite the tangible decrease in demand for smart devices in the market, the foldable category is expected to double and approach sales of 30 million units during 2023 – where, despite the competition that is increasing at a fairly fast pace, there is good reason to believe that this year Samsung will also be the one responsible for the bulk of this sales volume .
Considering that the total volume of sales of smartphones at Samsung during 2022 was 259 million units (a 15 percent drop compared to 2021 but still enough for the first place in the market), it is not impossible that sales of its foldables will reach the level of 10 percent of the general figure – and that would be Quite an impressive achievement considering that the prices of these models are still at the level of flagships only.
What will happen when the world finally meets flexible and foldable devices with mid-range prices? We can hope that we will get the answer to that soon.