According to the analyst, Gartner, foldable phones are expected to account for 5% of high-end phones by 2023; that is around 30 million units. Several phone manufacturers first showed off their foldable phones during MWC 2019 and other events in February, however they have high price points and aren’t likely to become mainstream just yet.
Discussing the forecast, Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, said:
“We expect that users will use a foldable phone as they do their regular smartphone, picking it up hundreds of times a day, unfolding it sporadically and typing on its plastic screen, which may scratch quickly depending on the way it folds. Through the next five years, we expect foldable phones to remain a niche product due to several manufacturing challenges. In addition to the surface of the screen, the price is a barrier despite we expect to decline with time. Currently priced at $2,000, foldable phones present too many trade-offs, even for many early technology adopters.”
Before foldable phones really do take off in several years, Gartner predicts that manufacturers will continue to experiment with the foldable form factor in order to find the optimal layout which suits the needs of users. Gartner said that the user experience will need to be continuous and seamless across all of the foldable screens.
In the same report, Gartner stated that the global device market (PCs, tablets, and phones) will see flat growth overall in 2019 with the downward trend in the PC market being expected to continue while the mobile phone market is expected to return to growth in 2020.