4x year-over-year growth, and it sold more in one month than all of last year.
According to Samsung, this latest crop of foldables is selling nicely. No, the company still isn’t sharing precise sales metrics, but it has dropped a handful of relative numbers. We already knew that Samsung’s pre-orders for these new third-gen folding phones beat year-to-date sales for its prior models, but that success apparently continues. In the first month of sales alone, Samsung says it sold more of these new foldables than it did for all of its folding phones in 2020, and it has now shipped four times as many folding phones in 2021 than it did in 2022.
Samsung points out that 4x gain actually beats some analysts’ expectations, though that isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison. Counterpoint, the firm cited, previously thought that the entire foldables market would grow by 3x in 2021. Either the entire market grew faster than expected (to be fair, fed by Samsung), or Samsung’s already massive piece of the pie has grown, or both. The distinction is admittedly a little immaterial given that Samsung encompasses so much of the market.
Analyst estimates for Samsung’s direct marketshare in the foldable space range from 85% to 93% for the year, but even when Samsung loses, it wins: It further has 95% of the folding display market locked down tight.
As AP’s Jules Wang pointed out in prior coverage, our readers also seem more interested in these newer phones. The sample size is small, but more of you pre-ordered the two new devices than we expected. Early sales metrics for carriers in South Korea were also positive indicators, and general sentiment, even among the Android Police staff, is positive: at least two of us outright bought the new Fold3. Precise numbers or not, Samsung’s new foldables are doing very well.
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