Foldable phones enter mainstream market as prices rise and competition intensifies

The foldable phone is no longer a curiosity. By 2028, manufacturers will ship 36 million of them annually—double the current volume—according to analysts tracking the sector. What was once a technological experiment, a thing you'd see in a tech reviewer's hands and nowhere else, is becoming ordinary. The shift is already visible in stores and in the choices Samsung and Google are making about what these devices cost.

Samsung and Google have both released new foldable models this year, and both companies have priced them aggressively high. There is no race to the bottom here. Instead, the two manufacturers are betting that consumers will accept premium pricing as the standard for this category—that a foldable phone is inherently a luxury object, the way a high-end watch or camera might be. The strategy signals confidence that the market has matured enough to support it. People are not buying foldables because they're cheap or because they have no other choice. They're buying them because the form factor itself has become desirable.

This transition from niche to mainstream is happening faster than many predicted. Five years ago, foldables were engineering demonstrations—impressive but impractical, prone to failure, and priced so high that only early adopters and tech enthusiasts could justify the purchase. The technology has improved substantially. Screens are more durable. Hinges work more reliably. The devices are thinner and lighter. And yet the prices have not fallen. If anything, they've climbed.

The real question now is what happens when Apple enters the market. The company has not yet released a foldable phone, but industry observers expect it will eventually. Apple's entry would carry enormous weight. When Apple adopts a technology category, it often signals to mainstream consumers that the category is ready for them. The iPhone didn't invent the smartphone, but it made smartphones something everyone wanted. A foldable iPhone could do something similar for foldables—legitimize them, normalize them, and potentially reshape how the entire industry thinks about phone design and pricing.

Samsung and Google are moving first, establishing the premium positioning and building the supply chains and manufacturing expertise that will be necessary at scale. They're also learning what consumers actually want from a foldable device. Do people want a phone that opens into a tablet? Do they want it for productivity, or for entertainment, or simply because it's novel? These questions are being answered in real time, in the market, by the people buying these phones.

The competitive landscape is tightening. Where there was once only Samsung, now Google competes directly. Soon Apple may join them. The manufacturers are not fighting over price—they're fighting over who can make the best foldable experience, who can make it most reliable, and who can make consumers believe it's worth the money. By 2028, when shipments have doubled, that competition will be fiercer still. The foldable phone era is not coming. It's already here.