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Was Samsung last year's top global smartphone vendor? Maybe and maybe not. But whichever market research firm you choose to trust on that, it's crystal clear that 2024 was most certainly not a great year for the company's foldable lineup.
Following in the footsteps of a 2023-released Galaxy Z Fold 5/Z Flip 5 duo that didn't exactly set the world on fire in terms of mainstream popularity, the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 generated even weaker sales numbers during their first few months of availability, further deepening their manufacturer's trouble in a market segment it once essentially created.
On the bright side, Samsung found almost unexpected success with the non-foldable Galaxy S24 handset family, including in the month leading up to the recent launch of the (mildly) improved Galaxy S25 roster.
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According to a generally well-informed X leaker and very close mobile industry watcher, the S24, S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra combined for a total of over 37 million unit sales around the world at the end of 2024. That's up around 2.5 million from the tally shared on the same social network by the same user (quoting the same Hana Securities source) a month ago, which proves that the three ultra-high-end Android phones managed to maintain their great popularity throughout the holiday season.
Unfortunately, we can't say the same about Samsung's latest foldable models, which never really sold like hotcakes. The cumulative sales total of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 reportedly stood at 4.9 million units as of November and only 5.21 million as of December 2024.
The redundant Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 are nowhere near as popular as Samsung probably expected. | Image Credit -- PhoneArena
That's barely an improvement for what are objectively two of the best foldable phones out there, and surprisingly or not, the one that made the smallest progress of the two devices was the more affordable Galaxy Z Flip 6.
If these numbers are correct (and I don't have any reason to believe they're not), Samsung sold just 80,000 or so Z Flip 6 units in the final month of last year, which is practically nothing. The Z Fold 6 did a little better, surging from 2.09 million to 2.32 million sales in total, but that was unsurprisingly not good enough to push the 2024 foldable duo above the figures posted by the Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 a year earlier.
Samsung clearly has a big foldable problem on its hands, and sadly, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 sound too repetitive and unexciting to solve that problem. Of course, that's not the tech giant's only problem, with its global smartphone sales as a whole declining in December 2024 by a very worrying 7 percent compared to December 2023. Worse yet, Samsung's 18.2 million unit sales in the last month of last year were apparently 2 percent weaker than the November 2024 total as well.
The S24 Ultra is still number one, but the base S24 is closing the gap
Despite costing (way) more than its little brothers, the Galaxy S24 Ultra has been easily the most successful member of the super-premium smartphone family, and unsurprisingly, that hasn't changed in December. Not when looking at the total 12-month sales figures of the S24 Ultra, S24, and S24 Plus, which reached 16.82 million, 13.2 million, and 7.14 million units respectively.
The S24 Ultra (left) remains way more successful in the long run than the S24 (right). | Image Credit -- PhoneArena
Interestingly enough, it appears that the "vanilla" Galaxy S24 managed to outsell the S24 Ultra in the month of December, jumping from 12.1 million units the previous month while the larger and higher-end model only added a little over a million units to its November total of 15.8 million.
Although it's probably too late now for the base S24 to exceed the all-time sales results of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, this somewhat surprising year-ending trend reversal might hint at what's to come for Samsung after the release of the Galaxy S25 and S25 Ultra (and the S25 Plus that almost no one seems to want).
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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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