Apple Finally Folded — And Samsung Wasted No Time Reminding Everyone Who Got There First

Apple's $1,999 iPhone Duo has landed, Samsung is trolling it on X, and analysts say Apple could grab a quarter of the foldable market this year.

Samsung, which has sold folding phones since the original Galaxy Fold in 2019 — eight generations and counting — didn't let the moment pass quietly. Within minutes of Apple's reveal, Samsung Mobile's US account was posting lines like "Let us know when you're done reheating our leftovers" and "So far, so same," alongside "Welcome to Foldables" billboards that went up in Seoul, Tokyo, and London. Regional accounts piled on: Samsung Canada called it "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," and Samsung Gulf asked, "First-Generation or Eighth?" Duolingo's owl even got pulled into the replies, with Samsung joking, "They copied us too. #Solidarity." Korea Herald, Marketing-Interactive

The trolling makes for good headlines, but the real fight is in the shipment numbers. Research firm TrendForce now projects Samsung will hold 35.1% of the global foldable market in 2026 on 7.1 million units, with Apple jumping straight into second place at 24.8% on an estimated 5 million iPhone Duo units — ahead of even Huawei, which ships a similar volume. That's a striking debut for a company that spent years publicly dismissing foldables as a gimmick, and it explains why Samsung moved to defend its turf the instant Apple stopped denying the category mattered. 

9to5Mac

For Indian buyers, the fight has a sharper edge. Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold8 starts at ₹1,79,999 in India; the iPhone Duo starts ₹1.2 lakh higher, at ₹2,99,900 — largely because the foldable iPhone isn't manufactured locally, so import duties and GST stack directly onto the price. That gap is far wider than the roughly $700 difference between the two phones' US starting prices, and it will do a lot of the deciding for Indian shoppers before specs ever enter the conversation.

Devbhoomi News, Cashify

It's worth keeping the hype in proportion, though: research firm IDC still expects foldables to stay under 3% of the entire global smartphone market in 2026, even with Apple now in the race. Apple's entry may reset who leads the category — but the category itself is still a rounding error next to the slab phones both companies sell by the hundreds of millions. The open question isn't who wins the foldable wars this year. It's whether Apple showing up finally turns foldables into something more than a premium niche — or whether the Duo just becomes the most expensive way yet to prove the form factor still hasn't found its mainstream moment.The Business Standard