Foldable prices won't drop soon, says Oppo

Foldable phones have come a long way since the dog days of the original Galaxy Z Fold and the Huawei Mate X. While foldable phones are a lot more ubiquitous nowadays, they still have a high average price. An executive at Oppo gave us the reason why the company thinks that foldable prices won’t drop soon.

While Samsung still owns a commanding lead in the foldable smartphone market, Oppo certainly isn’t making it easy on the company. Oppo has its fantastic Find N series of foldable phones, and they’ve been touted as some of the best competitors to the Galaxy Fold/Flip phones. This company, along with others like Vivo, Huawei, Motorola, and Xiaomi, has been populating the smartphone market with foldable phones, helping push them closer into the mainstream.

Oppo says that foldable prices won’t be dropping soon

The Mobile World Congress (MWC) is going on right now, and we’re seeing all sorts of devices from top brands. Oppo attended the event, and the company’s vice president for overseas sales, Billi Zhang gave his thoughts on why foldable phones are still so expensive (via Phone Arena).

Clamshell foldables are still struggling to dip below $1,000 and notebook foldables usually sit above $1700. They’ve been around for some time, but we’re still waiting for them to reach a more accessible price. Samsung holds the record for the cheapest foldable which was the Galaxy Z Flip 3 at $999.

So, what gives? Why are foldable phones so out of reach for use with tighter budgets? Well, Zhang said that it’s because the adoption rate of foldables is still pretty low. The foldable market flourished surprisingly well despite its trial by fire early on. More people are buying foldable phones, but they’re still not super widespread yet.

This means that companies aren’t making as much money on them yet. This helps keep the prices up in the sky, as companies need to price them higher to compensate. This is only exacerbated by the struggling global economy. This means that phone prices are higher and people’s bank accounts are lower by default.

Hopefully, sometime down the road, foldable phones will be able to dip to lower prices. As the technology becomes more accessible, we’ll see more companies make their own foldable, and we don’t know if one will shock the world with a more affordable foldable phone.