I heard a stat the other day in the Dithering podcast, I’m not sure from where, that said that foldable phones are something like 1.7% of the market in the US.

If that’s close it’s not why Samsung‘s market share increased so much. That was for ALL foldable phones of all brands. That wouldn’t make statistical sense.

There are people who like foldable phones. Apple does not have them. And Samsung‘s market share went up.

Thats all we know. The rest is a catchy headline.

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thewebguyd 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah I doubt the foldables are driving it.

I also bet the numbers will change now that the 17 is out. These things are cyclical, and whomever releases first in a year typically gets a small boost. Samsung releases phones twice a year, Jan/Feb and July typically, while Apple is once a year in the fall.

These numbers are also only for one quarter.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Android's market share increase in the US, and I say that as an iPhone user. Apple's marketshare, especially amongst young people in the US is not beneficial at all, it's effectively a monopoly, and with iMessage popularity here it causes a communications lock-in effect. But, I'm doubtful without seeing a full years worth of numbers or a more consistent increase.

Or maybe people are finally tired of Apple stagnating and are finally open to trying the other side.

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MBCook 3 days ago | parent [-]

A separate point they made on the same episode is that when Apple releases a foldable phone (rumored for next year) it might significantly increase the number of foldable sold for all brands.

It would give the idea of foldable phones a big visibility boost so more people would know they exist, thus perhaps more would buy them.

Think about how popular MP3 players were before the iPod, and how popular they were after even for non-Apple ones. It raised a lot of awareness.

It’s an interesting idea. Personally I have a hard time seeing a foldable phone being something I would be interested in. But I’m curious to see Apple’s take.

	▲	thewebguyd 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It'd definitely be interesting to see the affect on the foldable market if Apple releases one. I'm still skeptical on that happening though. I don't think the screen tech is ready for an Apple quality device yet, and Apple is historically very into device separation - they try not to blur the lines between their products. iPad will never be a mac, macs will never have touch screens, I have a hard time seeing them making a phone that effectively becomes an iPad mini.

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cma 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I doubt they are making all of the impact, but are we comparing market share of newly sold phones to market share of all in-use phones, or the podcast was talking about newly sold?

	▲	MBCook 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		I’m not sure it qualified. I’d assume in-use. But I doubt phones that get close to $2000 are popular enough to be a large percentage of new phones either. Better than 1.7%? Sure. Better than 5% I doubt it.