Huawei Shipped More Foldable Phones Than Samsung In Q1 2024, Surprisingly
This year, Q1 saw Samsung claim just 23% of global foldable shipments, putting them in the second spot for the first time ever since foldables became a thing. So, who took the first spot then? Well, none other than the company which was in second position last year: Huawei. In Q1 2024, Huawei claimed 35% of global shipments of foldables, which is massive.
Think about it: Huawei has the major handicap of losing its appeal to everyone who truly values Google services on their smartphones and many of their releases focus on China as a market, without a wide international release. Samsung doesn’t have these same limitations and even competes freely with Huawei in China.
However, having overcome its issues with providing 5G support in its foldables and the excellently-received Mate X5 and Pocket 2 as options for consumers, Huawei’s ascent in this market could have been predicted by more observant folks (I’m not one of them). It has certainly improved adoption of Huawei foldables in its home market.
Everyone Else Made Gains Year-Over-Year, Except Samsung
Things aren’t looking fantastic for Samsung compared to the numbers it was able to pull in last year. Sure, Huawei came in to take a big bite of the South Korean manufacturer’s slice of cake, but that can’t be the only factor responsible for this. Companies like Honor and Motorola also showed massive year-over-year icnreases in global shipments of foldables. In fact, Motorola’s numbers went up 1473% and Honor’s 460%.
Of all the major brands accounted for by Counterpoint Research, only Samsung saw a loss; a decrease of 42% compared to the first quarter of last year. That’s despite global shipments increasing by 49%. That’s not great news for Samsung.
Here’s a bit of my personal take on it. I think Samsung has the brand recognition that makes a lot of people move to their devices by default, but the company needs to do more towards making its foldables truly capable flagship devices. Compared to the latest options from companies like Huawei and Vivo, Samsung’s flagship foldable is notably deficient when it comes to the cameras, screen resolution, batteries, and charging. All I say, Samsung, is the treat the Z Fold device more like a flagship, because 25W charging might not cut it soon.
