Samsung Built the Foldable Phone. Apple May Own What Comes Next.

For years, Samsung has had a problem that most technology companies would envy: It was trying to persuade people to buy a product category that hardly anyone knew they needed.

Since 2019, the South Korean electronics giant has spent billions developing foldable smartphones, refining hinges, displays, software and industrial design while enduring the inevitable criticism that accompanied an expensive new category.

Now Apple has arrived.

On Wednesday, Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, with a starting price of $1,999. The device opens from a conventional smartphone into a 7.6-inch display and supports features including multitasking and Apple Pencil input. It will go on sale October 23.

Samsung’s response was unusually revealing.

Rather than quietly welcoming a new competitor, Samsung’s social-media accounts immediately began mocking Apple’s entrance. Among its taunts were “So far, so same” and a suggestion that Apple was merely “reheating our leftovers.” 

The jokes are entertaining. The business implications are more serious.

Samsung has spent years building the market that Apple is now entering. Apple may be about to discover whether that investment created a valuable new category for everyone — or simply prepared the ground for a competitor with a vastly more powerful ecosystem.

That is the central risk for Samsung.

Apple waited. Samsung built.

When Samsung introduced its first mass-market foldable smartphones in 2019, the company was effectively betting against conventional smartphone wisdom.

The early products were imperfect. Review units suffered screen problems, forcing Samsung to delay the initial rollout. But the company kept going. It has now produced eight generations of foldable phones. 

The category has remained relatively small compared with the conventional smartphone business. Yet Samsung has maintained a commanding position.

Counterpoint estimates Samsung will account for about 38 percent of global foldable smartphone sales this year. Huawei is expected to have roughly 30 percent. 

IDC has forecast that worldwide foldable smartphone shipments could grow by about 30 percent in 2026, helped substantially by Apple’s entry. An earlier IDC forecast projected Apple could capture more than 22 percent of unit sales in its first year and about 34 percent of the market by value. 

That combination — a small but rapidly expanding market and an enormous new competitor — explains Samsung’s dilemma.

Apple does not need to invent foldables.

It only needs to make them desirable to iPhone owners.

The second-mover advantage

There is a familiar pattern in consumer technology: The company that invents a category is not necessarily the company that ultimately dominates it.

Apple itself has repeatedly benefited from arriving after others.

The iPhone was not the first smartphone. The Apple Watch was not the first smartwatch. The iPod was not the first digital music player.

Apple’s advantage has often been its ability to take an established technological idea and package it in a way that makes it attractive to a much broader audience.

The same logic may apply here.

Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, described Apple’s approach as entering when a product reaches a certain level of maturity. 

Samsung has spent years discovering what consumers dislike about foldables: excessive weight, awkward proportions, durability concerns, visible creases and high prices.

Apple gets to study those lessons.

And it gets to enter with something Samsung cannot reproduce: the iPhone ecosystem.

For an Android manufacturer, persuading consumers to switch to a foldable can require convincing them to change both hardware and software habits.

Apple has the opposite problem.

It can ask millions of existing iPhone users whether they would like their iPhone to open into something closer to a small tablet.

That is a much easier proposition.

The $1,999 question

Apple’s pricing is particularly important.

The iPhone Duo begins at $1,999. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8 starts at $1,899. That puts the two devices within $100 of one another — a surprisingly aggressive position for Apple’s first entry into the category. 

“Keeping the iPhone Duo just under the $2,000 mark … looks like a pretty bold move by Apple,” said Liz Lee, an associate director at Counterpoint. 

The price also reveals Apple’s ambition.

This is not being presented as an experimental accessory for wealthy early adopters. It is being positioned as a premium iPhone — albeit an exceptionally expensive one.

That matters because the foldable market’s biggest obstacle has never simply been technology. It has been convincing consumers that folding a phone is worth paying hundreds of dollars more for.

Apple may be able to answer that question with software and ecosystem integration rather than hardware specifications alone.

The Duo has a 5.4-inch outer screen and a 7.6-inch inner display. It is designed to move between phone and tablet-like experiences while retaining access to Apple’s existing ecosystem. 

The question is whether consumers will see that as a useful new computing format or simply an expensive way of solving a problem they do not have.

Samsung’s uncomfortable victory

There is an irony at the heart of Apple’s arrival.

Samsung may help supply the technology that makes Apple’s challenge possible.

Apple is using components from the established foldable supply chain, including foldable displays made by Samsung Display, Samsung Electronics’ display subsidiary. 

In other words, Samsung can potentially make money from Apple’s foldable ambitions while simultaneously fighting Apple for the customers who buy the finished products.

This is a familiar structure in the technology industry.

The company that owns an important piece of the supply chain does not necessarily own the consumer relationship.

Samsung can manufacture a display.

Apple owns the iPhone.

That distinction may ultimately matter more.

Samsung’s real weapon: experience

Samsung is not without defenses.

Its latest Galaxy Z Fold8 weighs 201 grams, according to the company, after years of engineering aimed at making foldables thinner and lighter. Samsung has also redesigned its foldable around a wider, passport-like form factor. 

The company has an enormous installed base, years of software development and a global distribution network.

Liz Lee of Counterpoint expects Apple to put substantial pressure on Samsung’s share, but also points to Samsung’s “scale, years of experience and strong global distribution.” 

Samsung’s executives have also been notably less alarmed in interviews than its social-media accounts suggest.

In comments to WIRED, Samsung executives described Apple’s arrival as “absolutely welcome,” arguing that Apple could bring attention and legitimacy to the category. 

That may sound like corporate diplomacy.

It is also strategically plausible. A rising tide could lift Samsung’s boats.

If Apple persuades tens of millions of conventional smartphone users that foldables are the future, Samsung does not need to defeat Apple to benefit. It only needs to retain a substantial share of the newly expanded market.

But Apple changes the rules

The bigger danger is that Apple could redefine what consumers expect from a foldable.

Samsung’s achievement has been technological: Make a reliable phone that folds.

Apple’s challenge is commercial: Make people want one. Those are different problems.

Apple’s enormous installed base gives it a ready-made audience. Its control over hardware, operating systems, services and developers gives it the ability to make the foldable feel like an extension of an existing product rather than an entirely new category.

That is precisely what Samsung has spent years trying to accomplish from the opposite direction.

And the timing is important. IDC expects foldable shipments to grow substantially in 2026, while Reuters reports that the overall smartphone market is facing a difficult year. 

In a mature or contracting smartphone market, companies increasingly need consumers to replace one expensive device with another.

A new form factor creates a reason to upgrade.

Apple has therefore entered at a potentially ideal moment: The technology is mature enough to work, Samsung and Chinese competitors have absorbed much of the early experimentation, and millions of consumers have already seen foldables without necessarily buying one.

Apple can now ask a simple question: What if your next iPhone could become a tablet?

The irony of being first

Samsung’s jokes about Apple’s late arrival have a point.

Apple did not pioneer the modern foldable smartphone. Samsung did.

Samsung endured the broken screens, awkward designs and skepticism. It spent years making foldables thinner, lighter and more reliable.

But being first creates a different risk: You may spend years building a market only to discover that the most powerful competitor was watching.

Apple’s entry could validate everything Samsung has argued since 2019.

It could also expose the limits of Samsung’s head start.

The most important statistic may therefore not be whether Apple takes 22 percent, 25 percent or 30 percent of the foldable market.

It may be whether the entire category expands dramatically after Apple enters.

If that happens, Samsung can claim partial victory. It helped create the market and will remain one of its largest players.

But if Apple becomes synonymous with foldable phones in the minds of mainstream consumers, Samsung could face the more uncomfortable version of success: having invented the category, educated the customer and perfected the technology — only to watch another company become its defining brand.

That is why Samsung’s teasing matters. “Reheating our leftovers” is a good social-media line.

But underneath the joke is a much harder question for Samsung’s executives: What happens when the company that taught the world about foldables meets the company that taught the world what an iPhone can be?

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