By Shao Yiqi, Edited by Li Motian
The foldable screen market this year has been unusually flat.
The Honor Magic V6 and OPPO Find N6 released in March, and the vivo X Fold6 released at the end of June, are all annual routine iterations. Compared to the vibrant and competitive landscape of a few years ago when both large and small foldables were advancing hand in hand, smartphone manufacturers' attitudes toward foldable screens have taken a 180-degree turn.
First, small foldables have been completely abandoned. OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi have all technically suspended updates to their small foldable product lines, and Samsung has also started to slack off. The Flip 8 is highly likely to be the swan song of the series.
As for large foldables, everyone is also losing interest. Xiaomi has already withdrawn, and the other few are updating them in a very laid-back manner. Why are they just giving up on such high-end foldable screens?
The R&D costs for consumer electronics are extremely high, requiring large shipment volumes to amortize the costs. Cutting product lines despite huge costs can only be due to poor sales. After much deliberation, several manufacturers realized that holding on is not a viable solution; it is better to proactively cut them and reallocate resources to other products.
However, amidst this bleak landscape, one manufacturer has not only failed to shrink its front line but has instead made a fortune.
The answer is not hard to guess: it is Huawei.
A Unique Landscape Here
In 2025, Huawei launched four foldable models in one go. According to IDC, the shipments of the wide-foldable Pura X exceeded 1.5 million units one year after its launch [1], capturing 71.8% of the domestic foldable smartphone market in 2025.
In the first half of the not-yet-finished 2026, Huawei has only one product, the Pura X Max, but its initial popularity is even greater. Third-party data shows that the total sales of this model have also exceeded 500,000 units [2].
On the one hand, manufacturers are proactively shrinking their foldable product lines; on the other hand, Huawei's Pura X and Pura X Max are selling like hotcakes. It can only be described as a case of some dying of drought while others are drowning.
What makes competitors even more uncomfortable is that Huawei's foldable screens not only have high shipment volumes but also sell better as they get more expensive. The Pura X Max, priced at 10,999 RMB and released this year, saw initial sales significantly surpass those of the 7,499 RMB Pura X released last year.
The bulk of shipments in the smartphone market comes from low-cost models, but in the niche foldable screen market, it is the high-priced models that have seized the vast majority of the market share.
Looking at the pricing of foldable phones from various manufacturers, Huawei's pricing is generally higher than other brands. Especially in the large foldable product line, 10,000 RMB is a clear watershed. Except for Huawei, large foldable phones from other brands have tacitly been priced below 10,000 RMB.
After 2022, the domestic foldable screen market experienced a massive boom, with prices once dropping to around 7,000 RMB. According to Counterpoint and IDC [3], Huawei was indeed impacted in 2022/23 but rebounded rapidly in 2024.
In 2024, Huawei mainly launched two foldable screens: the large foldable Mate X5 priced at 11,999 RMB and the small foldable Pocket 2 priced at 7,499 RMB. The higher-priced Mate X5 actually accounted for nearly a quarter of the foldable screen market share that year [4].
From the reality of the domestic market, foldable screen smartphones are a category where the higher the price, the better they sell.
Why?
Foldable Screens Defy the Cost-Performance Ratio
The answer lies in the specifications and configurations of foldable screen smartphones.
Generally speaking, there are four components that determine the core functional experience of a smartphone: processor, camera lenses, screen, and battery.
Looking at the processor first, generally, the foldable flagship and the traditional bar flagship from the same manufacturer will use the same processor. The shipment volume of foldable screen smartphones is too low; reducing the processor specifications of the traditional bar flagship for the sake of the foldable screen would cost more than it is worth for the manufacturers.
For example, comparing Xiaomi's MIX Fold 3 with the contemporary traditional bar flagship Xiaomi 13 Pro, both use Qualcomm's 8 Gen 2 chip. It's just that the Fold 3, released slightly later, uses the leading version with a higher clock speed, so there is no significant gap in performance.
Looking at the camera lenses and battery, since foldable screen smartphones add components like hinges and stacked PCBs, and need to make the body as thin as possible, it is difficult to fit the same ultra-large camera module as the flagship traditional bar phones into the precious internal space.
Therefore, for products of the same generation from various manufacturers, the camera modules of foldable screens are more or less downsized compared to traditional bar flagships.
Still because of the need to make the body thin, even though the body of a large foldable seems to be twice that of a traditional bar phone, it still cannot fit a very large battery. Compared to traditional bar models, the battery capacity is also more or less reduced.
For example, the battery capacity of the Honor Magic 8 Pro is 7200mAh, while the same-generation large foldable phone Magic V6 "only" has 7150mAh/6850mAh.
Taking Huawei's latest Mate 80 Pro Max and Pura X Max as examples, the core components of the two are almost completely identical; the Pura X Max looks like it merely has one extra screen.
The screen is the home ground of foldable screens. Compared to traditional bar phones, it has an additional large-size screen, which is also the largest source of the price difference between foldable screens and traditional bar phones. For the two product lines of the same brand, the minimum pricing gap is also over 2,000 RMB.
At the same time, despite iterations of foldable screen smartphones up to now, it is still difficult to find a scenario that can truly only be achieved by a foldable screen and cannot be replaced by a traditional bar phone. The large-screen ecosystem and immersive experience are still just amplifying the original experience, without breeding revolutionary interactive innovations.
In other words, it is difficult to create an absolute gap in core functional experience between foldable screen smartphones and traditional bar flagships, leaving the cost-performance strategy of foldable screens with inherent deficiencies.
The connotation of "cost-performance" is to purchase as many core functions as possible with as little money as possible. For example, marginal functions like audio, charging speed, and material craftsmanship can be sacrificed, but key components like the processor and storage must be fully equipped.
Looking solely at the parameter specifications, the large screen of the foldable screen and its corresponding price premium leave consumers with a question: Should they bear an extra expense of over 2,000 RMB just for a larger screen?
Therefore, a cost-performance-oriented consumer is likely to lean more towards traditional bar flagship models with more complete parameters and lower pricing. This may be the key reason why the foldable screen market sees "the more expensive, the better they sell."
This trend has become increasingly evident in the past two years. Small foldables with lower profits are rapidly receding, while high-priced large foldables are regaining their position. Since the cost-performance route of small profits and quick sales is unviable, they might as well take the high-end route for a considerable profit margin.
Huawei is the first manufacturer to figure this out.
From Product to Brand
After 2025, in addition to large and small foldables, Huawei additionally deployed tri-fold and wide-fold designs. Different screen forms bring changes in interaction methods, deriving richer productivity scenarios and shaping a more recognizable brand image.
In addition to innovations in foldable forms, years of accumulated technical reputation and brand image have also made Huawei one of the domestic smartphone manufacturers with the strongest brand premium capability.
Consumer electronics is a market where it is difficult to achieve high premiums. Apple's hardware gross profit margin has been consistently above 35% for years, which is already a top-tier global level.
Brand is an important source of premium. Foldable screens breaking away from cost-performance to take a high-end route is actually a test of the manufacturer's brand influence.
The so-called high-endization focuses not on the leadership in product parameters, but on the high-end user structure, that is, the proportion of users with high purchasing power.
Therefore, in the proposition of high-endizing foldable screens, the problem manufacturers face is whether their traditional bar phone sales structure can support a group willing to pay a premium.
The user structure can be viewed from two dimensions: one is the Average Selling Price (ASP) of smartphone manufacturers.
Among domestic smartphone manufacturers, only Xiaomi is listed, making it impossible to compare using financial report standards; we can only refer to the standards of third-party institutions. According to Counterpoint's report [5], Apple's ASP is $908, leading by a cliff-like margin, while Samsung's ASP is "only" $340.
Counterpoint did not directly provide Huawei's ASP, but referring to its market outlook tracking report [6], which states that Huawei's smartphone ASP in 2025 has exceeded Samsung's, Huawei's ASP should be higher than $340.
The other is the manufacturer's share in the high-end market (above $600). According to Counterpoint's standards [7], although Xiaomi has grown rapidly in the high-end market in the past two years, Huawei still accounts for nearly 8% of the share, second only to Apple and Samsung.
Over the past decade, Huawei has steadily raised the average price of its products, turning its brand influence into a high-end user structure.
When this group of users gradually forms a scale, Huawei possesses the most solid high-end basic market among domestic smartphone manufacturers. Other domestic brands still have a considerable distance to catch up in terms of this user structure advantage.
In other words, with Samsung's presence being thin and Apple's foldable screen products not yet launched, Huawei actually has no real competitors in the domestic foldable screen market. Everyone uses the 10,000 RMB pricing as a boundary and plays in their own lanes.
That being said, according to Nikkei Asia [8], the upcoming Apple foldable screen has already set a small target of 10 million units in production this year. The total global sales of foldable screens in 2025 are only around 20 million units, meaning Apple will seize nearly one-third of the market right from the start.
What gives Apple the confidence to sell so many? Isn't it still the massive number of users with a higher average transaction value than Huawei?
It can be said that the current foldable screen smartphone market is left with only two types of consumers: those who have already bought Huawei, and those who are waiting for the release of Apple's foldable phone.
References
[1] China's smartphone market sees slight decline in Q1 2026, high-end share surges significantly, Huawei continues to lead, IDC [2] Huawei Pura X Max series wide-foldable phone sales exceed 500,000 units, new model priced from 10,999 RMB, IT Home [3] China's foldable smartphone market recovers in Q3, Huawei continues to lead, IDC [4] China Foldable Smartphone Sales Grow 27% YoY in 2024; Huawei Leads, Counterpoint Research [5] Global smartphone revenue grows 8% YoY in Q1 2026; ASP hits record high for the same period, Counterpoint Research [6] Global smartphone ASP to rise from $370 in 2025 to $412 in 2029, Counterpoint Research [7] Global high-end smartphone sales hit record high in H1 2025, Counterpoint Research [8] Apple to launch 5 new iPhone models to gain market share amid memory crunch, Nikkei Asia