alt Hacker News18-20 million foldable phones were sold in 2025. About 10 million PS5 consoles were sold in that same period. So there's definitely a bit of interest.
Why does it have to be an all-or-nothing fight for the final smartphone form? Can't it just be a semi-niche product that some people buy?
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The PS5 is also a dead market. It was released over 5 years ago, so anyone who wanted to buy one has done so already, and the PS6 is expected sooner rather than later. The PS5 is, quite literally, a bargain bin product.
I don't think this is a fair comparison, they are different markets – most people need a smartphone today, nobody really needs a PS5. A better comparison is to say that of smartphones sold in 2025 (~1.65bn), foldables represented ~1%. That's pretty niche.
Some countries, like China, LOVE foldable phones. It’s fun to see how cultural it is.
> Can't it just be a semi-niche product that some people buy?
As a fan of smaller smartphones (the likes of which aren’t made anymore), I thought the answer to this was supposedly a resounding no.
I mean, Apple sold millions of iPhones mini but we were told that wasn’t a viable product.
With iOS 27 Apple introduced the iPhone handoff, which allows sharing the same phone number with two devices [1]. Maybe their thinking is that Duo is not necessarily your only iPhone.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/127274