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Motorola overtakes Samsung to become second in foldable smartphone market

Published: 05 Sep. 2025, 19:34 Updated: 07 Sep. 2025, 17:52

Motorola’s Razr 60 series, released in April [MOTOROLA]

Motorola surpassed Samsung Electronics to take the No. 2 spot in the global foldable smartphone market in the second quarter, driven by strong sales of its latest Razr 60 series.

Market tracker Counterpoint Research said Friday that Motorola captured 28 percent of the global foldable market between April and June, double its 14 percent share from a year earlier. Samsung, by contrast, saw its share tumble from 21 percent to 9 percent, falling to third place.

Motorola launched three new clamshell-style foldables at the end of April — the Razr 60, Razr 60 Plus and Razr 60 Ultra. The company has been rolling out foldable Razr phones since 2019.

The flagship Razr 60 Ultra features a 7-inch internal display and a 4-inch external screen with peak brightness boosted to 4,500 nits from 3,000 nits in the previous model. It is equipped with the world’s first triple 50-megapixel camera setup and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, also used in Samsung’s Galaxy S25 series. Motorola said the new hinge is about four times more durable than previous models.

Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities have also been enhanced. The phone comes preloaded with the Perplexity AI app and offers features under “Moto AI,” including content-based recommendations, notification summaries and an AI-dedicated button.

Once considered the pride of the United States in mobile phones, Motorola was sold to China’s Lenovo in 2014. Today, it is seeing strong sales in both China and the United States. Counterpoint noted that sales of the new Razr models helped nearly triple U.S. foldable smartphone shipments in the second quarter.

A customer tries out the new Galaxy Z Flip 7 at the Samsung Store Hongdae in Mapo District, western Seoul, on July 25. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Counterpoint said that the price strategy was a key success factor in the U.S. market, noting that the country’s foldable shipments hit a record high for a second quarter. While the premium Razr 60 Ultra is priced at $1,299, on par with the Galaxy S25, the base Razr 60 costs just $699 — currently the cheapest foldable available in the United States.

Samsung may stage a comeback in the third quarter following the July release of its Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Z Fold 7.

Park Jin-seok, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, said that sales of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 more than doubled compared to the Z Fold 6 over the same period and that Samsung is expected to post strong results in the third quarter.

Huawei retained the top spot worldwide, expanding its market share from 32 percent a year earlier to 45 percent. Counterpoint said the Chinese market, which accounts for the bulk of global foldable shipments, remains solid thanks to Huawei’s dominance. Its premium book-style foldable, the Mate X6, alone accounted for more than a third of Huawei’s foldable shipments in the second quarter.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY PARK HAE-LEE [[email protected]]