A major smartphone company has decided to suspend its foldable product line, an unconfirmed report from China claims. Ma Guangyu of 163.com reported that the 13.6% growth in China’s foldable smartphone market this year is below expectations and that at least one company found it too difficult to maintain profitability under these conditions.
The source did not mention whether the company is withdrawing its 2025 release plans, but Oppo and vivo are the two with the longest gap since their last release.
Xiaomi Mix Flip and Xiaomi Mix Fold 4
Xiaomi just made it Mix Flip internationally, after the announcement next to the Mixing fold 4 in July. However, the report claims that production of the Flip fell short of the target number of 500,000 units, at 460,000, while sales of the Mix Fold 4 couldn’t even reach 100,000.
Oppo has been going for more than a year without launching a new foldable tablet: the Find N3 coming in October 2023. vivo, in turn, has not released a successor to the X Turn overwhich debuted in early 2023. Two horizontal folding models were announced in the X Fold3 and Fold3 Proalthough and even made the Pro the first foldable in international markets.
vivo
Transsion’s Tecno and Infinix brands had very recent launches with the Tecno Phantom V Fold2, In Flip2And Infinix Zero Flip. It’s unlikely that they would make such drastic decisions so soon after the official premieres.
According to IDC, China saw 2.23 million foldable shipments in the third quarter of 2024, representing 13.6% year-over-year growth – the lowest in two years. But only time will tell whether this is the market’s ceiling or just a small bump on the road to more explosive growth.