The market for foldable smartphone displays, after a year of adjustment, is expected to return to growth in 2026, with shipments reaching about 27.5 million panels, an increase of 24% from 2025, according to a quarterly report from research firm Counterpoint Research. Revenue is forecast to reach about $4.4 billion, up 48% year over year, as the product mix shifts toward premium panels and average selling prices rise. The recovery, the report says, is being driven not only by resurgent shipment volumes but by Apple and Samsung pushing their flagship foldable projects upmarket.
The numbers end a period of uncertainty for a category that has generated intense interest and uneven results. Foldable phones were the industry’s most ambitious hardware bet of the early 2020s, promising the screen size of a tablet in the pocket of a phone. Early models sold modestly, plagued by durability questions and high prices, and 2025 brought a mild contraction as the market digested the initial wave of launches. Counterpoint’s forecast for 2026 marks the return to expansion, with growth expected to accelerate through the year.
The role of Apple explains much of the movement. Apple’s entry into foldables — a product the company had resisted for years, waiting until the technology matured — is expected to reshape the market’s center of gravity. The arrival of a major new player typically expands the total market even as it squeezes existing competitors, and display suppliers are preparing for volumes that would have seemed improbable two years ago. Apple’s foldable, built on the premium end of the price spectrum, also raises the average selling price of the category as a whole.
Samsung, the category’s pioneer, remains the volume leader and is expected to defend its position with new models and aggressive pricing. The two companies’ projects — Apple at the premium end, Samsung across a wider range — are expected to account for the bulk of the industry’s growth, and their demand for higher-quality panels is pushing display makers to invest in new production capacity. The result, according to Counterpoint, is a structural improvement in both volumes and prices.
The display suppliers are the direct beneficiaries. The panels used in foldables are among the most technically demanding products in the industry — flexible OLED screens that must survive hundreds of thousands of folds — and the margins on them are higher than on standard smartphone displays. With volumes returning to growth and prices rising, the suppliers that have invested in foldable capacity, including Samsung Display and China’s BOE, stand to see the strongest revenue improvement in years.
The recovery is not without risk. Foldable phones remain a premium product, with prices that put them out of reach of most consumers, and the category’s growth has repeatedly disappointed the most optimistic forecasts. The 2025 adjustment showed that enthusiasm alone does not move units, and that the technology’s advantages — a larger screen in a pocketable device — must be matched by software that makes the form factor genuinely useful. Analysts said the 2026 forecast depends on the new models shipping as scheduled and on consumers treating foldables as more than a novelty.
The competitive dynamics are also shifting beneath the surface. Chinese manufacturers, which have flooded the market with foldables at lower price points, are expected to remain aggressive, and their expansion puts pressure on the premium pricing that Apple and Samsung are counting on. At the same time, the market is consolidating around the top suppliers, with smaller panel makers struggling to justify the investment in foldable production lines. The winners of the next phase, industry executives say, will be the companies that can deliver quality at scale.
For the broader smartphone industry, the foldable rebound is a rare piece of good news. The global smartphone market has matured, with replacement cycles lengthening and innovation plateauing, and foldables represent the category’s best hope of driving consumers to trade up. The display forecast, with its 24% volume growth and 48% revenue growth, suggests the trade-up is happening — and that the foldable, after years of promise, is finally becoming a mainstream product.
The second half of 2026 will be the test. The new models from Apple and Samsung, the pricing decisions of the Chinese challengers, and the willingness of consumers to pay for a screen that folds — all of these will determine whether Counterpoint’s forecast is met, exceeded, or missed. The display makers are planning for growth. After a year of contraction, that alone is a change.
Behind the demand forecasts sits an industrial build-out. The display makers supplying foldable panels are adding production lines specifically for the flexible OLED screens the devices require, a commitment that runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars for each new line. The equipment — laser cutters that shape the ultra-thin glass, lamination presses that bond the layers, hinges and cover materials that must survive years of folding — comes from a specialized supply chain that takes months to expand. Suppliers told Counterpoint that lead times for the most advanced foldable components have lengthened as Apple’s program ramped up, and that capacity decisions made this year will determine how many panels can be shipped in 2027. That makes the current forecasts more than a prediction of consumer demand; they are a schedule for factories already under construction.
