• Ilandar@lemmy.today
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    5 days ago

    Also of note, this is just Samsung jumping out of the game, but other companies like Motorola, Xiaomi, or similar could take the market of flip phones.

    From the article:

    Secondly, if you haven’t paid enough attention, you might have missed that there aren’t many clamshell-style foldables available in Western Markets. Oppo, Xiaomi, vivo and Honor have either discontinued the sales of flip foldables in Europe and the US or have never sold one outside of China in the first place. This leaves Samsung and Motorola as the only smartphone makers with flip foldables in their portfolio.

    It sounds like there isn’t enough demand for another company (other than Motorola, which by default owns the US market) to try to replace Samsung. As much as people mock Samsung for copying Apple, they are still the leader in the Android space. If they pivot away from flip style foldables it sends a signal to the rest of the industry that it’s a dead category.

    • sbeak@sopuli.xyz
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      5 days ago

      I’m not from the U.S. so I have no idea how flippy guys are doing over there, but in Asian markets they are quite popular and probably won’t die out anytime soon.

      But yes, Samsung being a market leader, although it doesn’t mean it’s completely dead, it does show bad signs. Like how headphone jacks were removed, as although they remain in some budget devices as well as in Sony’s Xperia line, the feature becomes niche and less mainstream.