Samsung is betting big on the foldable phones market it has revived, after noticing the high rate of consumers brand-switching to its Galaxy Z Fold and Flip.
Samsung Electronics mobile head, Roh Tae-moon announced the company’s bullish plans in a press conference held in New York to coincide with the launch of the new foldables range.
“By 2025, foldable items will take up more than 50 percent of Samsung‘s total premium smartphone shipments,” Roh told reporters Wednesday.
“Foldables will become the new standard of smartphones.”
This marks a huge commitment to the form. Last year, the Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3 made up only 2.6 per cent of the 271.5 million smartphones Samsung shipped globally.
The company shipped 4.6 million Z Flip 3 units and 2.5 million of the Z Fold 3 in 2021, according to data by market tracker Omdia.
While this may seem small fry, within the worldwide foldable market, Samsung’s 7.1 million units made up the bulk of the 9 million foldable smartphones shipped last year. Chinese competitors, Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, and vivo, account for less than two million foldables shipped.
Samsung’s foldables are, more importantly, drawing in customers from other brands, at a rate of three times Samsung’s Galaxy S flagship phones, Roh said.
Newcomers made up “a double-digit percentage” of Samsung’s 7.1 million foldable shipments last year.
Conservatively, this means over 700,000 people have defected from another brand to Samsung. The likely figures are in the millions.
“We consider this to be a quite meaningful percentage and a positive sign,” Roh said.
“This is about switchers from other brands,” he clarified, “not Samsung Galaxy device users switching to another Galaxy device.”
This week, Gary McGregor, Samsung’s Vice President of mobile in Australia told ChannelNews a similar story, saying over 30 per cent of the people who are buying a Samsung foldable smartphone are coming from “another brand”.
This is even more significant when considering Samsung retains nearly 90 per cent of its customers, while Apple retains 93 per cent. These rates “haven’t budged much in years”, Michael R. Levin, co-founder of market researcher Consumer Intelligence Research, tells the Wall Street Journal.
Samsung’s premium sector market share slipped last year, from 20 per cent to 17 per cent.
Counter Research estimates Samsung will sell 9 million Z Flip4 and Fold4 phones this year.