In context: Foldable phones are in their infancy but the appetite for them is apparently there. Huawei has been able to sell 200,000 units of its Mate X to Chinese consumers in just two months, despite the device being more expensive than Samsung’s Galaxy Fold and restricted to just one market.
During CES 2020, Samsung’s CEO gave an ambiguous estimate of how many Galaxy Fold units were sold in 2019. Admittedly, it was subject to a botched launch, but the company seemed less than enthusiastic to talk about the performance of its foldable smartphone, so it chose to hint that it was somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 units.
Now it was Huawei’s turn to put a number out there for its foldable Mate X since it launched in November. The Chinese tech giant says it’s somewhere around 100,000 units per month, which is not a bad start considering the device isn’t yet available outside of China.
By comparison, the Galaxy Fold is sold across the US, UK, France, Germany, India, and South Korea, as well as imported in a few other countries in the EU. And unlike Huawei, Samsung still has licensing rights for new versions of Android and Google services.
There is also a price difference between the two devices: the Galaxy Fold retails for around $2,000, while the Mate X is approximately $2,400. Both companies are rumoured to be launching newer and cheaper versions at MWC 2020 in just a few weeks, and Huawei does have a slim chance of dealing again with American companies, so it’ll be interesting to see if they come up with something that’ll bring the foldable smartphone to the mainstream.
Motorola has its own style of the foldable phone with the upcoming new Razr that resembles the flip phones of the past, and Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Bloom is said to feature a similar design, minus the chin. However, even that is quite expensive at $1,500 for relatively modest internal specs and Motorola isn’t even sure how to deal with the unexpectedly high demand, so good luck getting your hands on one.
Google says it’s working on foldable phones but isn’t on a hurry to bring a foldable Pixel to market. Still, analysts estimate around 30 million foldable phones will be sold by 2023, which is not hard to believe if they get cheaper and more durable.
