In 2014, Apple and Samsung had been duking it out to rule the U.S. smartphone market. Samsung was promoting units with giant screens, and iPhone followers had been demanding a response.
It took Apple a while, however the firm lastly launched the iPhone 6, breaking with earlier iterations and giving customers a large-screen choice. The iPhone gained.
However greater than a decade later, current smartphone gross sales and cargo figures sign that the Apple-Samsung struggle has returned. And as soon as once more, it is all concerning the display.
Within the second quarter, shipments from Samsung surged within the U.S., with its market share rising from 23% to 31% from the prior interval, in response to information from Canalys. Apple’s market share through the quarter declined to 49% from 56%.
Apple stays on prime of the U.S. smartphone market, taking the vast majority of new smartphone gross sales within the U.S. It is usually in second place around the globe, however the current slips factors to turbulence for Apple for the primary time in effectively over a decade.
That is one purpose traders have despatched Apple shares down 7.5% this yr, underperforming all the U.S. megacap tech firms apart from Tesla. Samsung’s inventory, in the meantime, is up about 35% in 2025.
Apple reported a 13% enhance in year-over-year iPhone gross sales in its July earnings.
In July, Samsung launched a pair of progressive new telephones that characteristic foldable screens. One mannequin, the Z Fold 7, can successfully flip right into a pill, whereas the Z Flip resembles an old-school flip telephone with trendy smartphone options. They had been added to Samsung’s catalog of telephones launched this spring underneath its Galaxy model, together with a thin-and-light telephone known as the Galaxy S25 Edge.
The units are additionally getting lots of traction on social media, notably round sturdiness exams.
One person posted a livestream that confirmed him bending the Z Fold 7 over 200,000 instances in a row. The video has been clipped and shared extensively on social media, with one model of the clip accumulating greater than 15 million views on YouTube.
Prior to now month, Samsung’s premium units, together with the Z Fold 7, had been talked about over 50,000 instances on social media, and 83% of these mentions had been optimistic or impartial, in response to information from Sprout Social, a social media analytics firm.
The market share numbers aren’t simply the results of person preferences. A lot of the shift in cargo figures within the June quarter, analysts mentioned, will be attributed to tariffs, that are inflicting “disruption” within the business as smartphone makers use totally different methods to reduce the influence on their enterprise.
However Samsung’s positive aspects additionally replicate the corporate’s capability to supply a a lot wider vary of merchandise at totally different costs in comparison with Apple. That features low-end telephones, which accounted for a lot of Samsung’s second-quarter U.S. enchancment, in addition to high-end units that price greater than any particular person iPhone.
Samsung’s Galaxy and Z telephone lineup “stretches from $650 as much as $2,400. That could be a huge span of units,” mentioned Canalys analyst Runar Bjorhovde. “There’s an thought you can goal individuals at each single value level, and you’ll meet them at each spot.”
The iPhone has just about regarded the identical since 2017 — an oblong piece of glass with a touchscreen on the entrance, and some cameras on the again. Nowadays, the corporate affords a collection of 4 slates starting from $829 to $1,599. Samsung and others are beginning to transcend the so-called sweet bar form and experimenting with new kind components.
Apple is predicted to begin doing the identical — starting with a possible launch subsequent month of a slimmer iPhone that may compete with Samsung’s Galaxy Edge.
“Apple is clearly betting that its 5.5mm Air mannequin goes to raise its fortunes as testing suggests a powerful need for the brand new kind issue,” wrote Loop Capital managing director John Donovan in Could.
JPMorgan Chase analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote in a report final month that Apple could launch a folding telephone subsequent yr to compete with Samsung’s Z Fold.
“Investor focus has already turned to the 2026 fall launches with Apple anticipated to launch its first foldable iPhone as a part of the iPhone 18 lineup in September 2026,” Chatterjee wrote.
Making an attempt new kind components affords Apple the chance to promote units at larger costs, in response to Bjorhovde.
Apple’s costliest telephone, the iPhone 16 Professional Max, presently begins at $1,199 for 256GB of storage and might go as much as $1,599 for a model with 1TB of storage. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, which was introduced final week, begins at $1,999 for the 256GB model and tops out at $2,419 for the 1TB model.
Chatterjee mentioned he thinks Apple’s model of a folding telephone may begin at $1,999.
An individual holds a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 telephone throughout an occasion in New York, U.S., July 8, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Folding telephones lastly mature
Samsung’s first folding telephone was launched in 2019, however bought off to a rocky begin. The preliminary launch was delayed after reviewers — together with CNBC — found that the early units would break alongside their folding crease.
However Samsung says this time is totally different, and that folding telephones are lastly able to go mainstream, particularly with respect to sturdiness.
“There actually are not trade-offs in direction of proudly owning a foldable gadget,” mentioned Drew Blackard, vp of cell product administration at Samsung Electronics America.
The South Korean firm would not present gross sales numbers, however Blackard mentioned the Galaxy Z Fold 7, the most recent model, had 25% extra preorders than any earlier Samsung folding telephone and that gross sales are outpacing the gadget’s predecessor by almost 50%.
“Samsung with the foldable is ready to truly optimize for innovation,” mentioned Bjorhovde. “Attempt to be forward, present that one thing is totally different, and there is a sure halo impact from that.”
Based on Counterpoint Analysis, a agency that estimates smartphone gross sales to clients, Samsung’s sell-through elevated 16% through the June quarter, because of demand for high-end units, together with a “slight enhance” from the slim S25 Edge.
The rise of synthetic intelligence can also be heralding new kind components for client electronics that would sooner or later substitute the iPhone.
OpenAI in Could acquired the startup of former Apple design guru Jony Ive for $6.5 billion. The AI startup plans to develop the following technology of {hardware}, and different AI startups have launched pins, pendants and glasses that depend on customers’ voice to manage the units.
Samsung units, in addition to different Android telephones, get entry to Google’s Gemini, which is extensively thought of to be the most effective AI fashions alongside OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Gemini has a number of options that customers cannot get with Siri and Apple Intelligence.
Blackard mentioned folding telephones, with their bigger shows, are effectively suited to AI. Google’s circle-to-search characteristic, which permits a person to easily circle one thing on the display that they’d wish to be taught extra about, is an instance, Blackard mentioned.
On a Samsung folding telephone, he mentioned, customers can nonetheless see the unique display with the content material they circled, in addition to one other display with supplementary info.
“It is far more productive having the ability to commute,” Blackard mentioned.
Buyers have fearful that Apple’s AI delays, together with its next-generation Siri that is now scheduled to return out subsequent yr, may begin hurting gross sales. However many analysts say that Apple’s model loyalty and lock-in will give it a interval of years earlier than iPhone clients begin defecting for opponents.
Chatterjee instructed CNBC that Apple’s technique with units is to attend till a expertise is prepared for the mainstream earlier than embracing it. That point could also be now for foldable units.
Apple has “by no means been about attempting to be the primary to market,” Chatterjee mentioned. “It is about being watchful, seeing a expertise mature, realizing that there are not any large roadblocks to that expertise adoption, after which shifting forward.”
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