Report claims major player considers pulling out of foldables market

12 November 2024

A major smartphone company decided to suspend its foldable product line, an unconfirmed report from China claims. Ma Guangyu of 163.com reported that the 13.6% growth in China's foldable smartphone market this year is below the expectations and at least one company found it too hard to maintain profitability under these conditions.

The source didn't name the company pulling its 2025 release plans, but Oppo and vivo are the two with the longest gap since their last release.

Xiaomi only just made it Mix Flip international, following the announcement alongside the Mix Fold 4 in July. However the report claims production of the Flip fell short of its 500,000-unit target, coming in at 460,000, while sales of the Mix Fold 4 couldn't even hit 100,000.

Oppo has gone over a year without launching a new foldable - the Find N3 coming in October 2023. vivo, for its part didn't release a successor of the X Flip, which debuted in early 2023. It did announce two horizontal foldables in the X Fold3 and Fold3 Pro, though and even made the Pro its first foldable in international markets.

Transsion's Tecno and Infinix brands had very recent launches with the Tecno Phantom V Fold2, V Flip2, and Infinix Zero Flip. It's unlikely that they would take such drastic decisions so close after the official premieres.

According to IDC, China saw 2.23 million foldable shipments in Q3 2024, marking a 13.6% year-on-year growth rate - the lowest in two years. But only time will tell if that's the market hitting its ceiling or just a minor bump on the way to more explosive growth.

Source (in Chinese) | Via