RESEARCH
Global Foldable Smartphone Shipments for 2025 Split Between 17.2M and 22M Units Across Analyst Trackers
Major analyst firms tracking the global foldable smartphone market landed on meaningfully different totals for 2025: Omdia forecast a flat 17.2 million units, TrendForce estimated 19.8 million (1.6% market penetration), IDC put the figure at 20.6 million (10% YoY growth), and DSCC's earlier stagnation call implied roughly 22 million. All four firms agree the category grew or held steady, and all point to 2026 as a bigger inflection point once Apple and Samsung's higher-profile foldables ship. But the spread on the 2025 base year -- nearly 28% between the low and high estimates -- means the widely quoted '30% growth in 2026' headlines are measured against different starting lines depending on which tracker is cited.
Findings
- TrendForce estimated global foldable phone shipments at 19.8 million units for 2025, with market penetration holding around 1.6%, roughly flat with 2024.
- IDC put worldwide foldable smartphone shipments at 20.6 million units for 2025, a forecast 10% YoY increase, in a December 2025 release that also called for 30% YoY growth in 2026.
- Omdia forecast global foldable shipments would stay flat at 17.2 million units for full-year 2025 -- the lowest of the four trackers and about 22% below DSCC's implied figure.
- DSCC's late-2024 forecast described foldable demand stabilizing at around 22 million units per year for 2024 and 2025 combined, the oldest and least granular of the four estimates and the only one not updated closer to year-end.
Delta Engine result
↔ Divergence Detected — Δ 0.6861 (threshold 0.05)
- TrendForce T0 92
- Omdia T0 85
- IDC T0 78
- DSCC (via OLED-Info) T0 45
Evidence quality
avg 25 · min 25 · max 25 · spread 0