Samsung Electronics revealed a new passport-sized foldable smartphone on Wednesday and announced price increases on two of its updated foldable models, as the company deals with climbing memory chip costs and prepares for increased competition in the growing foldable phone market.
The South Korean technology company was the first to bring foldable smartphones to the mainstream market, but that leadership position may soon face a serious test. Analysts widely expect Apple to release a foldable phone this year featuring a display comparable in size to an iPad mini.
Francisco Jeronimo, vice president at research firm IDC, underscored just how much is at stake for Samsung. “Strategically, this is one of Samsung’s most important foldable launches,” he said. “Samsung has to defend the category it created, and that’s why it cannot play it safe.”
The company showcased three new Galaxy Z foldable models at a launch event held in London. All three devices are powered by Alphabet’s Gemini artificial intelligence platform.
The new passport-sized Galaxy Z Fold8, which features a wider screen designed with video-focused users in mind, carries a price tag of $1,899. The higher-end Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra is priced at $2,099, while the clamshell-style Flip8 comes in at $1,199 — both representing $100 increases over their predecessor models.
Despite the pricing pressures, IDC projects that Samsung will grow its global smartphone market share in 2026, even as the overall market is expected to shrink by a record 14%, partly due to a memory chip shortage. The foldable segment, however, is forecast to buck that trend with shipments growing by about 20%.
The rising chip prices are putting significant strain on Samsung’s mobile division, with some analysts predicting it could post its first-ever quarterly loss for the April-through-June period. Meanwhile, those same high chip prices are driving record profits for Samsung’s semiconductor business.
According to data from Omdia, memory and storage components account for more than 60% of material costs in budget smartphones and over 30% in premium devices. Sheng Win Chow, a senior analyst at Omdia, noted that higher-priced phones have more cushion to absorb rising chip costs. “Memory is a much smaller share of the bill of materials on a device above $1,500 than on a mid-range phone, so there is more room to absorb (higher chip prices) at the top-end,” he said.
Chow also raised a broader question about the value proposition of premium foldables. “The harder question is what justifies the price. A bigger screen alone is no longer enough,” he added.
On the processing side, both the Fold8 and Fold8 Ultra run on the latest chip from Qualcomm, while the Flip8 uses either a Qualcomm processor or Samsung’s own Exynos chip, depending on the market where it is sold.
