Huawei is the leader of folding devices in China, and Honor is the brand that sells the most smartphones in the country
Folding mobile phones are increasingly most popular in China. The growth in sales of folding screen smartphones has been more than 90% during the last year an impressive figure, even taking into account that the number of folding phones sold is still a fraction of all smartphones sold in the country (and in the world).
The trend is clear: more and more foldables are sold in China, and the most successful brand in this segment in the country is Huaweibut this is not the only local company that is enjoying success among folding screen devices.
Huawei and Honor have almost half of the foldable market share in China
The folding market in China has grown considerably in the last year, from the third quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2023. To be more specific, that 90% year-on-year growth translates into more than 1.96 million units sold in the folding mobile segment.
This figure may seem very small compared to the number of overall smartphones sold in China each year (about 286 million in 2022), but still It is a remarkable growth. especially taking into account that this is a growth in sales of this segment in a year that smartphone sales Have decreased all over the planet.
In fact, the growth of the smartphone segment worldwide is 10% year-on-year, according to a studyand it is expected that in 2024 it will be even more significant.
Huawei is the company that unquestionably leads the foldable mobile phone segment, with a 31.7% market share. Huawei is followed by OPPO, with 17.1% of the market share, and in third place we have Samsung with 15.4% of the market. While the South Korean company is the leader in Europe and the rest of the world in terms of foldable smartphones, in China it is positioned in third place, with Honor hot on its heels with 15.1% of the market share.
OPPO’s growth in the foldable market in China clearly comes hand in hand with the launch of the OPPO Find N3 Flip, a clamshell-type foldable that came to compete with the Galaxy Z Flip5 from Samsung and which has become one of the most interesting mobiles who come from the Asian country.
Huawei’s success is very interesting, not only because it is being a great year in sales for the company in Chinese territory, but because it happens in the middle of the trade and technology war what they are carrying out China and the United States. One of the most important events in this conflict has been the discovery of the Kirin 9000S SoC inside the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, a chip that to be developed would have bypassed all the barriers imposed by United States sanctions.
Last but not least, Honor has become the brand with the greatest market share of smartphones in general in China, with 18.3% of the market, surpassing in one year the previous leaders of the local market, VIVO and OPPO, which have been displaced to second and third place, respectively. It has undoubtedly been an important year for Huawei and Honor in their home country.
