The Zhitong Finance App learned that IDC's latest quarterly mobile phone tracking report shows that in the fourth quarter of 2023, China's folding screen mobile phone market shipped about 2.771 million units, an increase of 149.6% over the previous year. Many new products from Huawei, OPPO, and Honor drove the folding screen market to continue its rapid growth trend this quarter.

In 2023, China's folding screen mobile phone market shipped about 7.07 million units, an increase of 114.5% over the previous year. Since the first product was launched in 2019, the folding screen phone market in China has been growing at a year-on-year rate of more than 100% for 4 consecutive years. As Android manufacturers and the upstream supply chain continue to increase investment in R&D, hardware technology is improved and matured, software system applications are optimized, and consumers' user experience is constantly improving. The further decline in prices has also made more consumers willing to try out folding screen phones as soon as possible.

The price of folding screen phones continues to drop

According to IDC data, the share of folding screen phones over $1,000 in 2023 has dropped from 81.0% a year ago to 66.5%, a year-on-year decrease of 14.5 percentage points. In addition to the overall cost reduction, the price of vertical folding products is relatively lower, which also caused the price of folding screens to drop to the 400-600 US dollar price range in 2023.

In terms of product form, horizontal folding products are more popular with Chinese consumers

Although the price of vertical folding products is relatively lower, horizontal folding products have always been favored by more Chinese consumers because they better reflect the large screen experience of folding screen phones. The market share of horizontal folding products increased again to 68.1% in 2023, an increase of 10.4 percentage points over the previous year. At present, apart from being easy to carry, vertical folding products still lack the necessary usage scenarios. There is also a clear gap between the user experience and straight-board machines at the same price, and there is still more room for improvement in product quality. The importance of horizontal folding products is constantly increasing among high-end business people in the mobile office scenario. At the same time, high-end people pay less attention to price and are more willing to choose horizontal products with full product configurations.

Market performance of folding screen mobile phone manufacturers in 2023

Since the launch of the Mate X5 series, it has been purchased at a higher price, and supply is in short supply, helping Huawei to firmly occupy the first position in the domestic folding screen market in 2023, with a market share of 37.4%. OPPO received 18.3% of the market share, ranking second in the overall folding screen market; among them, it ranked first in the vertical folding product market with a market share of 36.3%; while the horizontal folding Find N3 series was widely praised around the world. Honor gained strength in the folding screen phone market in the second half of 2023. With the popularity of many new folding products such as the Magic V2, it ranked third in the folding screen phone market for the whole year, with a share of 17.7%. Shipments increased by 467.0% year on year, the fastest growth rate. Samsung (SSNLF.US) accounts for more than half of the global folding screen phone market, yet it still has 11% of the market share in the fiercely competitive Chinese market. Ranked fourth. Vivo is ranked fifth. Its 5G transverse folding product, X Fold 2, which was first released in 2023, is about to be replaced. It will continue to build a new generation of all-round flagship products in terms of lightness and thinness, imaging capabilities, and standby time.