Foldable Screens: The Emerging Future of Mobile Phones

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In September 2026, the mobile phone industry witnessed its most intense "super launch season" in recent memory. Huawei unveiled the triple-folding Mate XT 2, Xiaomi introduced its inaugural "medium-folding" 18 Fold, and Apple presented its first foldable iPhone Duo...

Three major product launches occurred within a 72-hour span, with prices spanning from 10,999 yuan to 19,999 yuan.

Such a scenario would have been nearly unimaginable just three years ago.

Foldable screens were once dismissed as "gimmicky toys," plagued by fragile hinges, noticeable creases, and prohibitive prices that deterred potential buyers.

However, this year has witnessed a dramatic transformation.

The change is not in the folding mechanism itself but rather in the fact that foldable screens have finally discovered a compelling reason for their existence—AI integration.

The Decline of Bar Phones, The Rise of Foldable Screens

According to IDC data, smartphone shipments in the Chinese market reached approximately 284 million units in 2025, marking a year-on-year decrease of 0.6%. This figure stood at 370 million units in 2019, with an average annual compound decline exceeding 4%.

Against this backdrop of a shrinking market, mobile phone manufacturers are urgently seeking new growth avenues.

Foldable screens currently represent the only product form capable of simultaneously meeting two critical conditions: supporting high unit prices in the tens of thousands of yuan and offering differentiated hardware recognition.

In 2025, foldable smartphone shipments in China reached approximately 10.01 million units, a year-on-year increase of 9.2%, achieving growth amidst an overall market downturn.

Counterpoint Research predicts that by the end of 2026, cumulative global shipments of foldable smartphones will exceed 100 million units, with the next 100 million units likely taking only three years.

While these figures are impressive, the true focus should be on the intrinsic changes occurring within foldable screens.

In previous years, manufacturers competed on "foldability, fold count, and crease depth." Today, this arms race has largely concluded. For instance, vivo has reduced the weight of its large foldable phone to 217 grams, lighter than many traditional bar phones; Honor's Magic V6 has compressed its folded thickness to under 8.8mm while accommodating a 7150mAh battery.

At the hardware level, the "passing grade" for foldable screens has been raised significantly, and the marginal benefits of continuing to compete on thinness and crease depth are diminishing.

The new battleground has shifted to AI.

An intriguing question arises: How did AI phones and foldable screens, seemingly two independent trends, converge?

The answer lies in usage scenarios. In a June 2026 report, Counterpoint made a straightforward judgment: the book-style large foldable inner screen, measuring 7.8 to 8.3 inches and capable of multi-window parallel operation, is ideally suited for presenting "original content + AI results + operation interface" on the same screen, reducing the need for app switching.

The agency expects global foldable screen shipments to increase by approximately 20% year-on-year in 2026, with the book-style format's share rising from 51.5% to 75.7%.

In simpler terms, the tasks AI needs to perform demand more screen space than traditional bar phones can offer.

In the past, we handled tasks on our phones by "opening one app, completing the task, closing it, and then opening the next."

However, the workflow in the AI era is entirely different. When you ask AI to summarize a document, you need to refer to the original text simultaneously; when you ask AI to plan a trip, you need to view maps, flight, and hotel information at the same time; during a video conference, you need AI to transcribe and generate meeting minutes in real-time.

These tasks inherently require "multitasking," and the 6.1-inch screen of a traditional bar phone simply cannot support this level of interaction density.

The display space of a foldable screen, approaching tablet size when unfolded, provides AI with a "workbench"—a precise match between form and demand.

The vivo X Fold6 exemplifies this trend. It features the industry's first operating system, OriginOS 6 Fold, deeply customized for large foldable screens. Its core function, "Atomic Workbench," supports both serial and parallel modes. The serial mode allows up to five windows to be displayed in layers, while the parallel mode supports four windows tiled for simultaneous operation.

Paired with AI cross-window drag-and-drop functionality, text, tables, and images can be seamlessly transferred between different apps. The system AI also actively recommends app combinations based on user habits.

As vivo's vice president clearly stated at the launch event: the first evolution of foldable screens was achieving hardware maturity for large screens, and the second evolution should rely on AI interaction to form complete task-processing capabilities.

This judgment directly points out that foldable screens are no longer just "larger phone screens" but are evolving into "AI large-task platforms."

Samsung's approach is equally clear. The Galaxy Z Fold8 series comes equipped with the Galaxy AI system, optimized for the foldable form factor and focused on productivity scenarios.

More notably, MiniMax's MiniCPM series on-device large models have deeply empowered Samsung's Galaxy AI, marking the first time a Chinese on-device large model has entered the global flagship product line of an international leading mobile phone manufacturer.

This signal indicates that the integration of on-device AI and foldable screens has moved beyond the stage of "manufacturers creating their own demos" and has begun to enter standardized collaboration at the industrial chain level.

The Dawn of a "System-Level" War

If foldable screens are the hardware canvas for AI, then chips are the paintbrushes.

Nearly every flagship foldable phone released in 2026 has made significant investments in chips.

The Huawei Mate XT 2 is powered by the Kirin 9050 Pro chip, the first high-performance chip to adopt logical folding technology, supporting the operation of a total of 30 billion-parameter MoE full-modal large models on the device side for AI.

The Xiaomi 18 Fold integrates the self-developed 3nm Xuanjie O3 chip, HyperOS 4, and MiMo on-device large model, marking the first time Xiaomi's three major self-developed technologies—chips, AI, and OS—have come together in a single device.

The NPU architecture of the Xuanjie O3 is deeply optimized for large language models, delivering a tensor computing power of 200TOPS.

Apple's approach, while slightly different, follows the same underlying logic.

The iPhone Duo is equipped with a 2nm process Pro chip, paired with Apple Intelligence to enable split-screen summarization and cross-screen task flow. Its advantage lies not in aggressive parameters but in the seamless integration of inner and outer screens, system, and model scheduling.

Despite their differing approaches, the three manufacturers are generally aligned in direction. The hardware redundancy of foldable screens is now serving on-device AI inference rather than existing "for the sake of folding."

As professional media have pointed out: Leading mobile phone companies are no longer focusing on competing over single-point parameters but are advancing competition to the "system-level" realm of foldable screen form factors, self-developed chips, and intelligent agents.

Renowned analyst Ming-Chi Kuo previously noted that the mass production cost of hinges for Apple's foldable iPhone is expected to drop to $70–80, significantly lower than market expectations of $100–120, primarily due to optimized assembly design and Foxconn's involvement.

The substantial reduction in hinge costs not only provides Apple with greater pricing flexibility but also indicates that core components of foldable screens are transitioning from "custom scarcity" to "mass production."

When supply chains are no longer a bottleneck, manufacturers can allocate more resources to building AI capabilities, creating a virtuous cycle.

User Hesitation and Industry Bets

Of course, foldable screens are still far from becoming "mainstream."

From the user perspective, according to a 2025 survey by iiMedia Research, among the issues consumers are most dissatisfied with regarding foldable screens, "creases affecting aesthetics" ranked first at 58.75%, followed by "short battery life" (43.27%) and "lack of portability" (37.21%).

Foldable screens currently account for only about 2% of the global smartphone market and remain approximately three times more expensive than traditional bar phones. Widespread adoption will take time.

These figures indicate that foldable screens still have clear shortcomings in user experience that need to be addressed.

While new materials and processes, such as UTG ultra-thin flexible glass and titanium alloy hinges, continue to improve the crease issue, yield rate challenges still constrain capacity release.

In terms of battery life, although high-silicon anode battery technology has allowed foldable screens to accommodate 7000mAh-class batteries, the inherent power consumption of large screens limits the actual improvement in battery life experience.

However, from the industry's actions, manufacturers' attitudes are already clear.

IDC expects global smartphone shipments to decline by 16.7% year-on-year in 2026, with foldable screens being the only bright spot in the market. Foldable screen shipments are projected to reach 22.9 million units in 2026, a year-on-year increase of 12.6%.

Amid a general downturn, foldable screens represent a rare growth market.

More critically, Apple's entry into the foldable phone market carries dual significance. First, it serves as market education—when Apple users start discussing "whether to buy a foldable phone," the category truly enters the mainstream consciousness.

Second, it drives supply chain development. TrendForce analysis suggests that Apple's high requirements for displays, UTG, hinges, and overall device structure are expected to accelerate supply chain technology maturity and mass production scale while prompting other brands to enhance technical specifications and reduce costs.

What's Missing for Foldable Screens' "iPhone Moment"?

Given this, could foldable screens become mainstream soon?

Frankly, it's too early to conclude.

It took eight years for foldable screen shipments to surpass 100 million units, and Counterpoint predicts the next 100 million units will take only three years. The inflection point in growth rates is indeed arriving.

However, between the "growth inflection point" and "mainstream adoption" lies a price barrier and a qualitative leap in user experience.

My personal judgment is that AI is the final piece of the puzzle for foldable screens to go mainstream, but the puzzle is not yet fully assembled.

At the hardware level, foldable screens have nearly reached "good enough" levels in terms of thinness, crease control, and battery life. The next step is to further reduce costs through economies of scale, bringing prices down from the "starting at ten thousand yuan" range to more mainstream levels.

At the software level, the integration of AI and foldable screens is still in its early stages. Features like Atomic Workbench, AI meeting assistants, and cross-window drag-and-drop are already taking shape, but they are still a long way from delivering a "must-have" experience that can only be achieved with foldable screens.

TrendForce offers a thought-provoking insight: In the next phase of competition for foldable phones, beyond being thinner, lighter, and having fewer creases, creating an AI usage experience different from traditional bar phones will be key to further market expansion.

In other words, the future of foldable screens depends not on how many times they can fold but on whether the AI on the unfolded large screen can truly change how we use our devices.

Chip computing power is soaring, on-device large models are maturing, and operating systems are refactoring (reconstructing) interaction logic for foldable forms. All these elements are converging in the same direction.

Perhaps in another two years, when we become accustomed to using foldable screens to run AI assistants, video conferences, and document editing simultaneously, we will look back at the fall of 2026 and recognize it as the turning point when foldable screens transitioned from "niche novelty" to "mainstream choice."