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Samsung grabs ~80% of all 2022 foldable smartphone sales in the market's latest report

The Galaxy Z Fold4. (Source: Samsung)
The Galaxy Z Fold4. (Source: Samsung)
Samsung shipped more units of its flagship foldable mobile devices than up-and-coming rivals such as Motorola, Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo put together in 2022, according to the latest Canalys research on the subject. Despite this virtual monopoly, the market is expected to double in size this year, exhibiting a healthy trajectory that only took a slight ding from the decline of the smartphone market as a whole in its last quarter.

With total unit shipments calculated at ~14.2 million for the whole of 2022, foldables have yet to take over in the smartphone market, as OEMs such as Samsung might hope for its Galaxy Z Fold and Flip lines. Nevertheless, the sector has been found to have had only 1 instance of quarter-on-quarter declines in numbers thus far.

Furthermore, that was for the last quarter of 2022 (4Q2022), and, thus, probably dragged down by the poor performance of smartphone sales in general. Accordingly, Canalys still projects that the market for foldables will only keep growing, to the tune of about 30 million unit shipped in 2023.

Accordingly, that would be roughly twice what they were for the whole of 2022. Samsung was found to be responsible for just under 12 million of those, with Huawei trailing as a runner-up in these rankings with about 2 million.

Other brands such as OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi and Honor did indeed compete in this arena in the same year, all with devices of remarkably advanced specs and features, despite only being in their first or second generations in most cases. However, none of those companies managed to crack the million-shipment mark; in fact, Motorola only managed to record ~40,000 units sold in 2022.

Therefore, it will now be very interesting to see if the 3rd-gen Razr, with all of its rumored improvements, will do any better - not to mention what might happen to Samsung's market share should Google truly wade on in with its inaugural Pixel Fold this year.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2023 03 > Samsung grabs ~80% of all 2022 foldable smartphone sales in the market's latest report
Deirdre O'Donnell, 2023-03- 4 (Update: 2023-03- 4)