Apple is expected to launch its first folding iPhone Fold this fall. Apple has entered mature categories late before and still won them, as it did with tablets, watches and wireless earbuds. However, the foldable market it is walking into looks different, mainly because it has not actually been growing.
Firstly, let’s look at the category itself. Recon Analytics detects the handset model of every survey respondent passively, from the device user agent, across roughly 8,000 to 9,000 US mobile subscribers every week. Our Device Intelligence Group‘s Consumer Pulse service captures 30+ consumer demographics and preferences for 700,000+ US consumers at model level. In the twelve months to August 2026, foldables accounted for 1.13% of every smartphone in our data. In the twelve months before that, they were 1.14%. The trend is very similar for every trailing year during the peak launch periods. So the number has not moved, and that is despite three Motorola Razr generations, seven Galaxy Z and Flip generations, and Pixel Folds. Therefore, the flat line is not a sampling quirk, it simply reflects that the demand has flattened over the years. But the flat line is not the interesting part. What sits underneath it is, because “foldable owners” is not one group of people.
The chart below plots every foldable model against two demographics. One is the share of owners who are male, and the other is the share living in households earning $100,000 or more. The dashed lines mark the US smartphone average. Three clusters fall out, and they are not variations of each other.
- Book-style folds are male and affluent. Galaxy Z Fold7 owners are 63% male, and 28% of them earn $100K+, against a national smartphone average of 45% and 18.5%. Pixel Fold, pooling all three generations, is the most male-skewed handset in the entire dataset at 72%.
- Galaxy Z Flip is almost the mirror image. The clamshell Flips run 35% to 43% male, with the Z Flip5 at 34.8%. So between Pixel Fold and Z Flip5 there is a gender gap of nearly 37 points inside what the industry insists on calling one category. Income sits at or slightly above the market.
- Motorola Razr is where the volume actually is, but it is a value device rather than a flagship. Razr 2023, 2024 and 2025 owners look ordinary on gender at 45% to 50% male, yet only 6% to 8% of them earn $100K+. That is less than half the national rate.
This tells us that foldables have been able to carve our certain niches within the foldable users. In case of Razr, the device has been heavily subsidized and sometimes ranged at prepaid carriers, which it makes it skew towards lower income groups. But the co-relation between gender and foldable form factor is the most important one. Now, Apple’s device is expected to be book-style. That places it in the top right corner, which is the smallest, most male and most affluent of the three clusters, and also the one Samsung has spent seven generations failing to expand.
Carrier Promotions & Subsidies Key to Strong Demand
We also ask iPhone owners what they plan to spend on their next phone. Of the 51,700 who gave us a number, 1.8% said $1,800 or more and 12.7% said $1,200 or more, while 45.5% said under $600. So if the Fold arrives anywhere near the rumored $2,000, it sits above the stated budget of roughly 98 in 100 iPhone owners.
Therefore, carrier promotion and trade-in become the entire distribution question. And it arrives at exactly the wrong moment, because carriers spent 2026 making subsidies more conditional rather than more generous. Those subsidies are now concentrated on specific unlimited tiers, and eligibility for the existing base has tightened.
Interest in the form factor is real, but shallow. Asked to name their top three wants in a next phone, 15.1% of iPhone owners chose switching from a flat screen to a foldable, which is statistically the same as Samsung owners at 15.8%. So, Apple’s base is not resistant to the idea at all. However, it ranks well below longer battery life at 54.4% and a better camera at 39.3%, and it lands roughly level with new AI features at 17.2%. Among 18- to 29-year-old iPhone owners it rises to 21.9%, and above 60 it falls to 6.5%.
Source: Recon Analytics US consumer survey (May 2025 to July 2026, iPhone owners n = 56,216, next-phone budget n = 51,700)
Strong iPhone Installed Base in Postpaid is Major Advantage for Apple
The question on the iPhone Fold was never whether Apple can build a good folding phone. It is that the category has sat flat at <2% for two years, and the book-style corner Apple is entering is the narrowest and most affluent consumer set, but Apple does have a base no more hostile to foldables than Samsung’s own, plus a young, high income, postpaid segment that is measurably ready to move. So, whether that converts comes down to the price and what the carriers are willing to put on the table.
For analysis of foldables by age, carrier, ethnicity, state or city/DMA, reach out to [email protected]