Honor's First Flip Phone Is Coming This Year
Honor will join companies like Samsung, Motorola and Oppo in the flip phone race.
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When it comes to foldable phones, Honor has only released book-style foldables like the Magic V2 (pictured above) so far.
Honor said it will launch its first flip phone before the end of the year as it seeks to challenge Samsung and Motorola in the foldable phone sub-category.
Honor is "preparing for a flip phone launch" now that it's in the "final stages" internally, CEO George Zhao told CNBC on Tuesday. This marks a major expansion for the Chinese company's foldable phone portfolio, which currently consists only of book-style foldable phones.
A wave of flip phones have hit the market in recent years, signaling a comeback of the clamshell-style phone popularized decades ago. Samsung launched the Galaxy Z Flip 5 weeks after Motorola's Razr Plus arrived on the scene in 2023. Both phones feature dramatic redesigns centered on the front screen. The Razr Plus for instance, is outfitted with a large 3.6-inch cover screen that raised the bar for flip phones, which until then had minuscule external displays that were good for little more than checking notifications. Oppo, a top Chinese phone-maker, shook up the design of flip phones before that in 2022 by introducing a vertically oriented cover screen on the Find N2 Flip.
Read more: Honor's Smart Ring Is Coming for Oura, Too
Foldable phones are still a niche, but sales of both book-style and flip-style phones are expected to rocket. Global foldable shipments were expected to reach 20.4 million units in 2023 based on the IDC's forecasts, representing 43.9% growth compared to 2022. Last year, IDC predicted that foldable phones would capture 3.5% of overall market share by 2027.
"We are very positive about foldables for the future," Zhao said.
