What you need to know
- An industry expert from Korea says that Samsung will wait for the Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Z Fold 8 to make major changes.
- Despite market pressure pushing Samsung to innovate, “expectations have dropped,” the report explains.
- The news comes after a down year in 2024 for Samsung that saw it apologize for not innovating.
2024 turned out to be a rough year for Samsung. Multiple reports, as well as official financial releases from the company, indicated that sales were stalling. The situation became so dire that Samsung apologized for not innovating enough and made changes to its leadership at the end of last year. Surprisingly, the latest reports out of Korea indicate that Samsung may be planning yet another incremental update for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Galaxy Z Fold 7 this year.
Korean outlet The Elec interviewed a representative for Fastprint, a circuit board company, about Samsung’s outlook for 2025. For reference, Fastprint is one of the PCB companies contracted to supply parts for Galaxy phones. According to the interview, prospective buyers shouldn’t expect major changes to Samsung’s upcoming foldables.
“It seems to be a niche product yet, and (Samsung Electronics’ foldable phone shipments are not increasing significantly) and the market seems to continue to expect Apple foldable products,” the Fastprint representative said in the interview, translated to English. “If you look at the form factor of Samsung Electronics’ foldable phone, it seems that there will be some changes from the Z8 series released in 2026, not the Galaxy Z7 series next year.”
Despite increasing competition in the foldable market, Samsung doesn’t appear to be rapidly innovating to make a better foldable phone, according to the expert.
“There is also a chase of Chinese foldable phones, and the release of Apple foldable products is expected, so it seems to be Samsung Electronics’ strategy to respond to this, but expectations have dropped a lot,” they said.
Being that the Galaxy Z Fold line hasn’t received major upgrades since the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and the Galaxy Z Flip line hasn’t been overhauled since the Galaxy Z Flip 5, this outlook is disappointing. Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a successful challenger to Samsung’s larger foldables, and Motorola’s Razr Plus 2024 is arguably the best clamshell foldable on the market. There could be a OnePlus Open 2 this year to add more competition, and that just covers the foldables stateside.
It seems like a strange time for Samsung to take its foot off the gas, especially after it apologized for failing to innovate and sales dipped in 2024. Additionally, with the company reportedly planning a budget clamshell foldable, there will be more pressure for it to differentiate the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and the rumored Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE.
However, industry experts in Korea appear to be expecting progress to stall for another year. Although that would seem surprising considering the state of the foldable market, it would line up with Samsung’s recent iterative smartphone updates.
