A few years ago, when Samsung was promoting the Z Fold3 it put out promotional material to justify the investment, what you might also call the higher cost, its foldable phone. And Samsung decided that the cost savings of adopting the Galaxy Z Fold3 should be compared to the “traditional tech stack of a laptop, phone, and tablet.” Samsung’s case for a more expensive foldable was that it could save a company the cost of buying five devices for a small team, nearly $15,000 over two years, while 500 devices could lead to over $850,000 in savings for a larger organization.
The argument went that if you included hardware, IT management, maintenance and repairs, and software consolidating devices leads to reduced IT labor costs, lower maintenance and repair expenses, and fewer software license requirements.
| Phone | Price | Expected Launch Date |
|---|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 | $1,800 | August 2023 |
| Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 | $1,000 | August 2023 |
| Motorola Razr Plus | $999 | July 2023 |
| TCL Fold 2 | $1,500 | Q4’23 |
| Oppo Find N 2 | $1,499 | Q4’23 |
| Honor Magic V 2 | $1,399 | Q4’23 |
| Google Pixel Fold | $1,799 | August 2023 |
| Huawei Mate X3 | $1,900 | Grey market in the US |
I am not sure how foldables are positioned these days. I really am not. Maybe the marketing teams at manufacturers know, but the mobile space is so full of enthusiast sites, innuendo, rumor, and all influenced by regional availability and ISPs that it is hard to fathom a coherent message. It may be that developing markets for mobile phones will be the bigger and better adopters of foldables. Only the dominance of Apple in a country or region would be a blocker for foldables, maybe dampening opportunities, but otherwise, there is no reason to assume that foldables are not the form factor for all future mobile phone upgrades.
What is quite obvious is that a flip phone with a foldable display is pretty expensive for a flip phone, and a foldable phone is at the highest band of pricing for any mobile phone category. Yet, it also seems as if there is no end of interest in foldables. It is unlikely that early adopters are going to be dissuaded by the price, and it is also likely that as we move into third and fourth generations of foldables that we will see price drops for previous generations open up the market for more users.
What Display Daily Thinks
Availability and pricing for foldables is all over the map. It is very likely that the US market will remain behind the rest of the world for some time to come, heavily driven as it is by Apple, given where the premium pricing is going to position foldables, up against the next iPhone.
The Samsung argument, dated as it is (it was meant for the Fold3), there is not much data to support either the contention that businesses are spending money on multiple devices for employees or that a foldable will actually replace that, so-called, device stack. Foldables are an emotional purchase. People treat their phones like a personal statement and not a functional device. In that case, foldables have a lot of ways in which they can redefine the form factor and create unique designs that will appeal to different demographics.
If there is a killer price for a foldable, it has not been made apparent so far.
