In early September 2026, the smartphone industry broke its usual tacit understanding of staggered releases in previous years.
On the afternoon of September 7, Huawei launched the second-generation tri-fold Mate XT 2; that evening, Xiaomi followed up with its first "mid-fold" 18 Fold; and Apple, at 1:00 a.m. Beijing Time on September 10, unveiled the long-rumored foldable iPhone Duo, with the tagline "Surprise and shine".
Within three days, three flagship launch events and three foldable phones priced at around CNY 10,000 collided head-on, which the industry dubbed a rare "three-way battle" in the history of the foldable screen track.
Behind this coincidence lies the approach of a set of milestone data. The latest forecast released by market research firm Counterpoint Research on September 7 gave a clear judgment: the cumulative global shipments of foldable smartphones will exceed 100 million units by the end of 2026. Counting from the debut of the first commercial foldable screen in 2019, it took this category a full eight years to accumulate its first "100 million" in the smartphone world. More meaningfully, Counterpoint also projected: the next 100 million units will take only three years.
Eight years of polishing a "fold", why did it explode precisely this year? How can the quality of the 100 million units be dissected? And what gives foldable screens the power to "split in half" the rock-solid mobile phone market? This article first uses a data microscope to see through the origins of these 100 million units, and then examines how it reshapes the landscape, rewrites the form factor, and leverages an entire industrial chain.
01. Eight Years of Slow Burn, Suddenly Accelerating: The Acceleration Curve Behind 100 Million Units
Let's look at the total volume first. Counterpoint Research's "Foldable Smartphone Market Forecast" shows that by the end of 2026, the cumulative global shipments of foldable smartphones will exceed 100 million units—this is the most iconic round-number milestone for this category since its inception in 2019. If the timeline is flattened, these 100 million units were accumulated quite "slowly": when foldable screens first debuted in 2019, global annual shipments were only counted in the hundreds of thousands. Although they doubled year on year in the following years, the absolute scale was always just a drop in the bucket compared to the overall smartphone market, which ships over a billion units annually.
However, a slow burn does not mean a loss of momentum; the key lies in the steep rise of the growth rate curve. Counterpoint data shows that the growth rate of foldable shipments will increase from 18% in 2025 to about 24% in 2026, and is expected to further accelerate to 37% in 2027—this will be the fastest annual growth rate for foldables since 2022. The upward growth rate and the upward base, the superposition of these two variables, led Counterpoint to give an optimistic projection for the subsequent trend: at this pace, the cumulative shipments of foldables are expected to double again from 100 million to 200 million units within the next three years.
Looking at it within the broader market, the actual value of this "100 million" is even more worth pondering. Counterpoint estimates that foldables currently account for only about 2% of the overall smartphone market—among the over one billion smartphone shipments globally per year (according to IDC statistics), foldables remain a very small slice. The low penetration rate tells exactly another story: it means this category has barely touched the growth ceiling, and every percentage point increase in penetration is pure incremental space. As Tarun Pathak, Research Director at Counterpoint, stated: "Foldables still represent a very small portion of the overall smartphone market, and the growth potential for this category far exceeds current shipment volumes."
The conclusion from the data microscope is clear: 100 million units is not a terminal number, but an important coordinate through which an acceleration curve passes. Eight years of buildup have resulted in a cognitive shift from "whether to make it" to "whether to buy it"—foldable screens are standing at the inflection point of transitioning from a novelty to a mainstream product.
02. Samsung Defending the Title, Apple Dropping In, Huawei Holding the Ground: After 100 Million Units, the Landscape is "Split" First
Behind the total volume of 100 million units is a fiercely reshuffling of the rankings. Counterpoint provided a forecast for the global foldable smartphone market share in 2026, predicting a tripartite dominance: Samsung continues to lead with a 38% share, Apple enters the market in its first year and directly leaps to second place globally with a 25% share, and Huawei ranks third with 22%. The three major brands combined account for about 85% of the global foldable market, making the top-tier landscape clearer than ever before.
The most variable worth dissecting is Apple. Counterpoint predicts that Apple's first foldable iPhone will ship up to 6 million units in 2026—keep in mind that Apple's new product was only officially unveiled on September 10, leaving an actual sales window of just a few short months. Securing the second place globally with only an incomplete sales year is rare in any product category it has entered. Deputy Director Liz Lee stated bluntly: "Even with a shorter sales window, we still expect Apple to capture a 25% share and leap directly to second place, which fully demonstrates that Apple can still exert a massive impact on this category even when production capacity is not yet fully ready."
However, Apple's entry is not without constraints. Counterpoint specifically pointed out that the bigger bottleneck for Apple's foldable screen at the initial stage of launch comes from the supply side rather than the demand side: capacity ramp-up for core components such as hinges and ultra-thin flexible glass takes time, initial supply is destined to be limited, and sales will gradually climb as capacity is released. It is precisely for this reason that 2027 will be Apple's true "full season"—Counterpoint expects that Apple's shipments will more than double from the 6 million units base at that time, and its share is expected to reach 40%, becoming the largest incremental driver pushing the market to accelerate by 37% in 2027.
Shifting the lens from the global market back to China, the landscape presents a different picture. According to IDC data, in the first quarter of 2026, in the Chinese foldable market, Huawei firmly held the first place with about a 60% shipment share, followed by Honor with 21%. This dominance also transmitted to the overall market: also according to IDC statistics, in the second quarter of 2026, Huawei returned to the overall first place in the Chinese smartphone market with a 22.6% share and shipments of about 14.92 million units, representing a year-on-year increase of 19.4%; during the same period, Apple's shipments in China grew by 24.4% year-on-year, with its share increasing from 13.9% to 18.1%. Behind the ebb and flow of market shares between the top two players, new form factors such as foldable screens and wide straight-bar phones are becoming key engines driving high-end upgrades—for the first time, form factor innovation is placed on par with chips and imaging in importance.
03. Clamshell Folds Recede, Book-style Folds Take the Stage: Form Factor Differentiation Exposes Real Demand
If one only stares at the total volume and market share, they will miss a more profound internal revolution in foldable screens—the structural migration of form factors. Omdia data shows that in the first half of 2026, shipments of clamshell (Flip) foldable screens decreased by 47% year-on-year, while the book-style horizontal fold form factor remained basically flat, with its share in global foldable shipments rising to 69%; among them, Huawei and Samsung combined captured a 75% share of the horizontal fold sub-market.
Between the rise and fall lies the most authentic demand signal: consumers vote with their feet, abandoning the novelty of clamshell folds that turn "small screens into square screens" and turning to the practicality of horizontal folds that offer "truly expanded large screens". The value anchor of foldable screens has never been "being foldable", but rather "what can fit inside when unfolded". This also explains why 2026 has become the explosion year for foldable form factors—in May this year, Huawei took the lead in launching the "wide fold" Pura X Max, which has a wider screen aspect ratio and is closer to a small tablet; Samsung followed up in August with the Galaxy Z Fold 8; and Xiaomi positioned itself in the new track with the "mid-fold" 18 Fold, featuring a 7.58-inch inner screen and a √2∶1 aspect ratio; while the Mate XT 2 "spread-wing tri-fold" brought by Huawei on September 7 pushed the screen boundaries in the unfolded state to new heights.
More importantly, there is synergy at the ecosystem level—as of September 7, 2026, the number of terminal devices running HarmonyOS 6 and 7 has exceeded 85 million. The system-level AI agent Xiaoyi can perceive over 200 system-level user data points, invoke over 2,100 system capabilities, and connect to more than 2,000 HarmonyOS agents. Larger screens and stronger on-device intelligence are converging: the "large screen dividend" of foldable screens is expanding from watching videos and browsing documents to new scenarios of multi-tasking and AI interaction.
The rewards for form factor innovation are also reflected in sales—Huawei officially disclosed that the cumulative shipments of the Pura X Max reached 1.2 million units four months after its launch. Against the backdrop of slowing growth in straight-bar flagships, foldable screens inject scarce increments into the high-end market with the logic of "new form factors creating new demands": this is precisely the most typical signal of a mature category moving towards the mainstream.
04. A Foldable Screen Leverages the Entire Value Chain
Foldable screens change not only the form factor of mobile phones but also their value composition. Counterpoint's "Foldable Display Panel Shipments and Technology Report" predicts that in 2026, foldable smartphone panel shipments will reach about 27.5 million units, a year-on-year increase of 24%; while panel revenue is expected to reach USD 4.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 48%—the revenue growth rate is nearly twice the shipment growth rate. This indicates that the inner screens of foldables are becoming larger and more expensive, and the value per unit of display area is significantly elevated. It is precisely for this reason that the capacity and technical thresholds for foldable panels are much higher than those for straight-bar panels, and supply has long been concentrated in the hands of a few top panel manufacturers with large-scale mass production capabilities, forming a natural moat in this segment.
"Expensive" is an unavoidable label for foldable screens, and also the key to understanding their value logic. Counterpoint estimates that the selling price of foldable smartphones is still about three times that of traditional straight-bar smartphones, and it is expected to take several more years to achieve mass popularization. Where is the extra money spent? The industry generally believes that the value increment is almost entirely concentrated in two areas—the "foldable screen" and the "foldable hinge". Compared to straight-bar phones, foldable screens additionally add two core mechanisms: flexible display modules and precision hinges. The thickness of ultra-thin flexible glass (UTG) can now be reduced to about 30 micrometers, thinner than a human hair, yet it must balance hardness, light transmittance, and the lifespan of repeated bending; the hinge has been upgraded from ordinary stainless steel to a combination of liquid metal, titanium alloy, and precision injection molding processes, withstanding hundreds of thousands of openings and closings with millimeter-level or even micrometer-level fit accuracy. Every form factor innovation in foldable screens is backed by a collective leap in materials engineering and manufacturing precision.
Interestingly, this round of value reassessment is also overlaid with an external cycle. According to TrendForce data, in the first quarter of 2026, global DRAM contract prices rose by 90%—95% quarter-on-quarter, and NAND contract prices rose by 70%—75%. Rising storage prices are pushing up the cost curve for all smartphones. Richard Yu, Managing Director of Huawei, Chairman of the Product Investment Review Committee, and Chairman of the Consumer BG, previously stated publicly that under high memory prices, mobile phones may face large-scale price increases; Apple CEO Tim Cook also publicly discussed storage price increases—according to media reports, he described the current memory price environment as a "once-in-a-century flood" and stated that the company is evaluating all response options. Although this statement was aimed at the impact of storage price increases on the entire product line, it equally explains why high-end models generally choose to upgrade and raise their prices.
Against the backdrop where straight-bar flagships struggle to absorb price increases through spec wars, foldable screens, due to their high unit price and large gross margin space, have instead become a "value container" for brands to absorb costs and maintain high-end pricing—the industry's business logic is shifting from "proving the future by selling more units" to "surviving by making each unit sold more valuable".
Bringing the lens back to the set of data at the beginning of the article: 100 million units, eight years; the next 100 million units, three years. What foldable screens have truly split is not just the mobile phone screen, but the unchanging form factor inertia of the smartphone industry over the past two decades—it splits the market into "straight-bar" and "foldable" halves, splits the competition into "spec stacking" and "form factor innovation" halves, and also shifts the value focus of the industrial chain from the arms race of chips and imaging to the precision long-distance run of hinges, flexible materials, and display processes.
As Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi compete on the same stage in the same week, and as HarmonyOS terminals exceed 85 million to provide soil for the foldable ecosystem, foldable screens are no longer a sideline in the mobile phone market. Instead, on the track of the high-end market and form factor innovation, they are growing into another pole capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with straight-bar phones.
- End -