Apple’s foldable challenge: Catching up with Android leaders | Communications Today

The iPhone Duo – Apple’s first foldable – was announced September 9 with a starting price in the U.S. of $1,999. That’s seven years after Samsung shipped the original Galaxy Fold. The Duo will go on sale later next month.

Research firm Counterpoint expects the global foldable market to grow 20% in 2026, with Apple grabbing 28% of that market almost immediately. But the firm also pegs foldables at just 2% of the global smartphone market.

In the U.S., Recon Analytics puts foldables at just 1.13%. Further, Recon reports that only 2% of those it surveyed said they would pay more than $1,800 for a folding iPhone. Meanwhile, some U.S. carriers are pulling back on the subsidies and trade-in deals that usually close that kind of pricing gap.

So how might Duo sales compare with those of existing Android foldables? And what kind of experience might Duo owners expect? This Ookla Speedtest analysis helps to set the bar for foldables, in order to see how an iOS folding phone might compare against a market currently composed of Androids.
Key takeaways:

• Foldables may remain niche for now. Foldables accounted for approximately 1.4% of all smartphone Speedtest samples worldwide, based on 2026 data through the beginning of September. But adoption was uneven among some wealthy countries, ranging from less than 1% in Germany to 3% in the U.S. to 9% in South Korea. Samsung, the world’s biggest foldable phone vendor, is based in South Korea, which may contribute to that country’s interest in the gadgets. The iPhone Duo’s relatively steep price tag – compared with standard slab phones – may prevent foldables from capturing significant global market share.
• Samsung’s folding lead is clear. Samsung – which holds the lead in overall global smartphone market share – is also the leader in foldables. Folding models from Samsung accounted for eight of the top 10 most popular foldables in 2026, based on Speedtest sample share. The Galaxy Z Fold7 alone accounted for nearly a quarter of all samples. Honor – based on its share across the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and Europe – also emerged as a top foldable vendor.
• The form factor of foldables may be shifting. Book-style folds represented three out of every four foldables globally in 2026 data through September. Further, Book-style folds have gained a slight amount of share from flip-style folds over the past two years. But passport-sized folds – like that of the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and the forthcoming iPhone Duo – stand to grow above their current level of 3.3% of samples.
• Foldables tend to run hot and fast. Speedtest data shows that popular foldables in the U.S. frequently support faster network speeds, but also tend to record higher battery temperatures, when compared to a control (such as the folding Galaxy Z Fold8 vs. the slab Galaxy S26 Ultra).

Unfolding the market share and adoption of folds
Foldables this year generally range from 1-3% of total Speedtest smartphone sample share in the countries that have the population to attract multiple folding models from several vendors.

In South Korea, folds accounted for almost 10% of samples. That may not be a surprise given the country’s tech-forward culture and the fact that it’s headquarters to the world’s biggest smartphone vendor and the leading provider of foldable smartphones: Samsung.

Some high-income countries, including the U.S., U.K. and Japan, were on the higher end of the foldables adoption scale. But other wealthy countries, like Germany, show adoption levels below 1%. Thus, relatively pricey foldables, like Apple’s Duo, may not do much to push the gadgets into the mainstream.

Further, it’s clear that a wide selection of foldable options on store shelves doesn’t reliably translate into more foldables in people’s pockets.

Here are the top models of folding phones globally, in 2026 data through Friday, September 11, 2026:

Samsung’s lead in the global smartphone market in 2026 is clear in foldables too, as it represented 76.2% of all global foldable Speedtest samples. And Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold7 – released in 2025 – accounted for almost a quarter of the folding market. Honor’s position in the top 10 list is mainly due to its sales in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and Europe.

In a timeline analysis of the launch trajectory among several top foldables – with each gadget’s announcement lined up across a representative sample of 14 countries – Samsung’s Galaxy Z Folds set the pace for adoption, in terms of Speedtest samples. The Fold7 climbed well past where the Fold6 topped out. The Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra, still early in their own run, tacked a touch behind the Fold7’s pace, which may reflect some stagnation in interest in the category overall.

Google’s Pixel Fold line showed a spike right out of the gate, which faded in the weeks that followed. Meanwhile, some Motorola Razrs showed steady gains.

Overall, these results indicate an early, sharp ramp in foldable Speedtest samples that quickly levels off, potentially indicating interest only among early adopters rather than broad-based sales that continue to grow in the months after each launch.

It’s not clear how an iPhone Duo – with a price tag toward the top end of the foldables market – might fare in a similar measurement across the 30 weeks following its September announcement.

Samsung’s slipping grip on foldable market share, from the first quarter of 2024 to the second quarter of 2026 across a representative sample of 14 countries, isn’t necessarily a surprise:

As additional vendors enter the market, they will naturally cut into an early provider’s grip. Indeed, over the past two years, Motorola has nearly tripled its share (to 8.5%) while Google has gone from a few percentage points to almost 6%.

But it’s also worth noting that Samsung’s share decline has flattened out in recent quarters.

Finally, a look at each foldable’s form factor shows a clear market leader in 2026, at least right now:

Foldables built like a small book – hinged down the middle, opening to reveal a larger interior screen – accounted for three-quarters of all Speedtest sample volume globally in 2026. Clamshell designs, like the Galaxy Z Flip and Motorola’s revived Razr line, come in a distant second.

And clamshell folds have been losing a small amount of share to book folds, based on data from the first quarter of 2024 to the second quarter of 2026 across a representative sample of 14 countries.

How this might change as Apple enters the market remains to be seen. Samsung’s new Fold8 shares the same passport-style shape as the Duo.

Comparing foldables against slabs
So foldables are gaining some market share globally. But how do they compare against the slab phones we’re all familiar with?

To answer that question, we measured a handful of select foldables against their unique “control,” a regular slab phone from the same manufacturer, running the same chipset and modem. How does the foldable Galaxy Z Fold8 compare to the slab Galaxy S26 Ultra, for example, or the foldable Pixel 10 Pro Fold to the slab Pixel 10 Pro XL? Such pairs share the same basic silicon – the same internals – but differ in shape. This type of comparison helps to eliminate the differences that might crop up when comparing two devices with different chip or modem tiers.

Thus, in the below analysis, a foldable “beating” its control by 9% doesn’t mean it’s 9% faster than phones in general – it means it’s 9% faster than the specific slab phone built on the same (or very similar) internals.

There are caveats here: antenna placement, firmware, how people actually use their phone, all this can play a role. This foldable-to-control comparison narrows down possible differences, but it doesn’t eliminate them.

For this analysis we focused on six devices with sufficient Speedtest samples and controls: Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold6, Fold7, Fold8, Fold8 Ultra, Flip6, and Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold. The results are focused solely on the U.S. market to maintain a comparable dataset and minimize network and location mix effects. Samples were taken over 120 days, from May 1 through August 28, 2026, to capture results from the latest devices in the most recent networking conditions. Aggregated results are also matched to network operators to eliminate cross-carrier performance differences.

These measurements focus on standard network metrics including median download speed as well as 10th percentile results, or the worst 10% of download Speedtests samples. Meantime, median upload speed is a metric that may become more important in the burgeoning age of AI, as users increasingly upload data to AI models running in a cloud computing environment. Finally, 90th percentile packet-loss reduction is about reliability, not speed. Packet loss is the share of data that never makes it through a user’s connection – looking at the worst 10% of sessions shows whether a phone holds up when the network is struggling.

Thus, these are the results that might highlight whether a folding phone’s antenna, hinge design, thermal envelope, or RF components affect the gadget’s performance. The new Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra are consistent standouts when compared with their respective controls, while the Flip6 persistently sits behind its control. This may be due to the Flip6’s smaller form factor and different internal components when compared with its control, the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Speaking of the network, the results below focus on signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio, or SINR. Unlike raw signal strength, or RSRP, SINR reflects how clean the received signal is relative to interference and noise. SINR helps to measure what a phone’s antenna and radio hardware can do with a cellular signal once it arrives, including how well they filter out noise and interference. Two phones in the exact same spot, on the exact same carrier, can post different SINR measurements due to such hardware. However, like most radio frequency measurements, SINR can also be affected by a variety of factors ranging from spectrum bands to cell density to network loading. This analysis covers 24 one-hour U.S. slices across six weekly dates from August 6 through September 10, 2026. Foldables were compared with their controls within the same carrier, 5G radio access technology, and one-hour time slice. The observations were not matched to the same location, spectrum band, cell, or network load, so the results should be treated as directional rather than as a controlled test.

A few highlights: The Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra run the same chipset and modem – the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and the Snapdragon X85, respectively. But both models post lower median SINR than their control, the Galaxy S26 Ultra. The Fold8 trails its control by 0.67 dB (decibels, which is the way SINR is measured), while the Fold8 Ultra is broadly in line with its control, at just 0.09 dB lower. Further, the Fold8 – one of the strongest speed performers in this analysis – has the lowest 10th percentile SINR, at 0.42 dB below its control. Meaning, speed and signal quality aren’t the same measurement, and a phone that wins on one doesn’t automatically win on the other.

The Flip6 adds another wrinkle. It has the single lowest median SINR relative to its control of all six phones, at 1.13 dB lower, but has the best 10th percentile measurement relative to its control, at 0.53 dB higher. Meaning, the Flip6 trails its control under typical conditions, but compares more favorably when conditions get bad.

To be clear though, overall SINR measurements in a typical cellular network can range from 20 dB to below 0 dB, so the differences among these devices aren’t substantial.

Heat check: Taking the temperature of foldables
Now, there’s one more metric worth investigating: device temperature.

Battery temperature measures how warm the phone runs, unplugged, compared to its matched control. The Flip6 runs the hottest of all six while the Fold7 actually runs cooler than its control. The rest sit in between, and the pattern by generation is clear: Fold6 barely warmer, Fold7 cooler, then Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra both warmer again, with Fold8 Ultra running warmer still.

Thermal headroom measures something adjacent but different. It’s Android’s own read on how close a phone sits to throttling, when the operating system would slow processing due to overheating issues. A higher headroom number means the phone is closer to throttling, not further from it. The Fold7 is a standout here as it’s the furthest from its control.

The broad takeaway is that foldables are measurably warmer than their controls. But not warm enough that Android’s own throttling math treats it as an issue. This may be due to a variety of factors including foldables’ slimmer form and larger screen size, when compared to their control, which can pose engineering challenges to heat dissipation.

Finally, it seems like some of these metrics have been improving, based on a look at the evolution of Samsung’s foldable lineup. Download, upload, and packet loss generally improve across the newer Galaxy Fold generations shown below, although SINR does not follow the same steady trend.

Thus, it’s clear that most of Samsung’s foldables show some performance improvements against its slab control. That improvement isn’t steady across all models and metrics, but there is improvement nonetheless. The one item is battery temperature, and that’s increasing. Indeed, Fold8 Ultra runs warmer (compared to its control) than any Fold generation before it, at +0.34°C. That’s not a one-off – Fold8 posted the second-warmest reading, at +0.18°C. This could be due to a variety of factors, including a thinner design and the omission of a vapor chamber for cooling.

As Apple enters the foldable market and hardware design continues to mature, foldables are proving they can keep pace with – and even outperform – traditional slab phones in cellular speed and reliability. While engineering trade-offs like thermal management remain an active challenge, the trajectory is clear: Folding phones are steadily evolving from a niche experiment into a mainstream flagship standard. Ookla