Samsung expects 50% jump in its foldable phone sales this year

Samsung has the first-mover advantage in the foldable smartphone market and the company wants to maximize that. After unveiling the new Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5 earlier this week, the company has said that it expects to sell 50% more units than it did last year.

The Korean giant is counting on the increasing popularity of its foldable phones to deliver this remarkable result. It's particularly confident that the Galaxy Z Flip 5 will be able to drive additional demand that helps reach this target.

Samsung to have 75% of foldable smartphone market share

TM Roh, the boss of Samsung's mobile division, revealed during a press conference in Seoul that Samsung's foldable smartphone sales last year were close to 10 million units. 60% of those sales were driven by the Galaxy Z Flip 4 with the Galaxy Z Fold 4 accounting for the rest.

The size of the total foldable smartphone market is expected to cross 20 million units this year, according to estimates from market analysis firms IDC and TrendForce. Based on these predicts, Samsung has set its Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5 sales target at 15 million units. If these figures turn out to be accurate, this would Samsung a staggering 75% market share in the foldables category.

Roh expects that the Galaxy Z Flip 5 will take an even bigger share of the sales this year, particularly in Samsung's home country of South Korea. He also pointed out that Samsung's primarily focus is to achieve popularization of its foldables. So the company will focus more on getting people to switch over to this form factor. Eventually, it should be able to build a big enough customer base to extract higher margins from these hardware sales.

The company's latest foldables, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5, are currently available for pre-order from Samsung.com. They'll hit shelves on August 11.