Should Apple Copy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold?

Apple is hardly one to follow others in developing its product lineup. They prefer to set the standard for form factor, design, features, and software in smartphones and every other product they make.

One exception was the move to larger screen smartphones. Apple introduced the first iPhone 6 Plus in 2014, three years after Samsung’s Galaxy Note. The large display format was well received and now the Plus and Pro Max models account for a significant share of iPhone sales each year.

This brings us to foldable phones. This week Samsung is expected to announce its latest large screen folding smartphone, the Galaxy Z Fold 7. This is Samsung’s seventh generation foldable smartphone, and begs the perennial question, will Apple ever release a foldable iPhone? It might make sense for Apple to capture some share of a narrow market and possibly grow it.

We find large format foldable smartphones account for a relatively small share of Android smartphone sales. (Large format excludes the Motorola Razr and Samsung Galaxy Flip models which are standard sized smartphones that fold in half to become more compact.) In the most recent twelve-month period, large format foldable smartphones account for about 2% of total Android sales, based on our survey of US mobile phone buyers. Almost all of those sales were Samsung phones, with Google’s folding Pixel phones making up a very small portion.

So, these large format foldable phones remain a small part of the overall US smartphone market. Yet, in that niche market, at least some of the buyers switch from Apple and the iOS operating system. The comparison to how Apple adopted the large-format display is instructive. Apple was late in launching a large form factor compared to Samsung and other manufacturers. Now, large-format displays account for over one-third of Apple iPhone US unit sales (Chart 1).