Folding phone shipments reached nearly 10M in 2021, says Samsung

Ahead of Samsung’s Unpacked event on August 10^th, Samsung Electronics President TM Roh said in a blog post that more people globally were picking up foldable phones.

Roh wrote saying that three years ago, the Samsung Galaxy foldables could be summed up in a single word as radical. However, very quickly, it was clear that this groundbreaking, flexible design fit perfectly into modern lifestyles. As a result, what was once a novelty three years ago is now the preferred choice for millions of people globally.

In the blog post, Roh says that the industry shipped nearly 10 million foldable smartphones worldwide in 2021, up 300 percent from 2020.

However, Samsung could be exaggerating the market slightly—CEO of DSCC and a widely-cited display tech analyst, Ross Young, shared data saying that there were 7.9 million foldable smartphones shipped. In contrast, the IDC says there were 7.1 million foldable devices shipped.

Whatever the number is, it would represent just a fraction of the smartphone market. According to IDC, Samsung alone shipped over 272 million smartphones in 2021.

Nonetheless, Ross also shared data that suggests Samsung overwhelmingly has the lead in the foldable market. Samsung led 2021 with an overwhelming 87.8 percent of foldable phones shipped, according to DSCC, while Huawei came in a distant second at 9.3 percent. According to IDC, with foldable shipments estimated to reach 27.6 million in 2025, Samsung will want to capture as much of that potential market as possible.