Huawei and Apple bend to a tougher market with foldable phones as memory crunch bites

Highly anticipated foldable launches from Apple and Huawei Technologies next week are expected to offer a much-needed lifeline to a subdued global smartphone market, which is bracing for an estimated 17 per cent decline in 2026. Apple’s September 9 event has the industry watching closely, with expectations building for its first foldable iPhone to take centre stage alongside standard model refreshes and the keynote debut of new CEO John Ternus.

The US tech giant’s biggest product showcase of the year will arrive just two days after Shenzhen-based Huawei unveils the Mate XT 2, an upgrade to its flagship trifold device. Analysts are counting on Apple’s foldable debut to lift a sluggish smartphone sector reeling from soaring component costs. “Apple’s entry into the foldable market has done more than reignite growth in a category that was losing momentum,” Nabila Popal, senior research director at research firm IDC, said on Wednesday.

“It has fundamentally altered the market’s trajectory.” Popal projected that Apple would ship more than 17 million foldable iPhones by 2027, capturing about 40 per cent of the global foldable market. “Apple is positioned to challenge Huawei and Samsung for leadership in markets where they have long dominated – an extraordinary outcome for a product expected to be less than two years into its life cycle,” Popal said. The memory tsunami that we warned about is now hitting the market in full, and consumers are starting to pay the AI bill

Francisco Jeronimo, IDC The foldable segment is set to grow 13 per cent this year and a further 18 per cent in 2027, making it the “only silver lining” in a troubled mobile market, according to IDC’s expectations. Global smartphone shipments are expected to fall 16.7 per cent this year, which would mark their steepest annual contraction on record, according to IDC’s latest report. The forecast is down from the research firm’s previous estimate of a 13.9 per cent decline, issued last quarter.

A severe memory supply crunch, triggered by surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, is expected to hit hardware makers hardest in the second half of 2026, dragging semi-annual shipments down by more than 27 per cent, year on year. As shipment volumes slump, device prices are soaring, according to IDC, which said the average global selling price of a smartphone is forecast to jump about 27 per cent this year to US$581, with price increases expected to spill into 2027.

“The memory tsunami that we warned about is now hitting the market in full, and consumers are starting to pay the AI bill,” said Francisco Jeronimo, vice-president for worldwide client devices at IDC. “The era of the cheap smartphone has ended. “From here, the winners will be the vendors with the scale and supply leverage to hold demand at prices consumers have never had to pay before.” The memory-chip crisis is sending shock waves across the broader consumer electronics supply chain, dragging down profitability for personal computers, tablets and digital cameras.

Chinese action camera maker Insta360, a major competitor to US-based GoPro, on Thursday reported a 94 per cent drop in first-half net profit, citing rising memory-chip costs as the primary culprit. The Shenzhen-based firm noted that high memory prices had “posed significant challenges to the company’s product costs and put pressure on short-term profitability”. Insta360 recorded a 30.4 million yuan (US$4.5 million) profit for the first six months of 2026, down sharply from 519.8 million yuan in the same period last year, despite revenue climbing 50 per cent to reach 5.5 billion yuan.