Two major companies may not launch flip phones this year. In a new report, Ming-Chi Kuo mentions that the global sales momentum of foldable phones has slowed down recently.
That is rather interesting, as it has been on the rise for the longest time. In any case, the report states that even huge companies in the space, such as Samsung, are forced to revise their foldable phone shipment targets.
Two major companies may not launch flip phones at all in 2024
What’s even more interesting is that two major players don’t really plan on launching flip phones at all this year. The companies in question are OPPO and Vivo. Do note that the report states that they are not planning to do so in its homeland, China.
Still, those companies almost always launch their devices in their homeland first, before making them available globally. Or at the very least they launch at the same time. So if they’re not planning to launch something in China, chances are that it’s not coming to global markets either.
Vivo didn’t really make a single one of its foldable phones available globally. OPPO is a different story, though. The company’s OPPO Find N3 handset turned out to be a huge success, that device is basically identical to the OnePlus Open, by the way, so that statement goes for both devices as a whole.
OPPO offered two of its clamshell foldable phones in markets outside of China
That is a book-style foldable, though. OPPO also launched two clamshell foldables to global markets, the OPPO Find N2 Flip and Find N3 Flip. Well, it seems like we won’t see their successor this year.
The sales have slowed down in the Chinese market as well. Flip phone foldables were usually more appealing to consumers due to their price tags. It seems like most Chinese brands kind of lost interest in flip phones (at least this year), other than Huawei.
This doesn’t mean that OPPO and Vivo won’t continue offering flip phone foldables in 2025, though. Also, this is just a report from a market analyst, nothing has been confirmed just yet.