The Honor Magic Vs is on display at Honor’s stand at Mobile World Congres in Barcelona. The near $1,700 device is Honor’s attempt to challenge Samsung in the foldable smartphone market.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
It looks like the year of the foldable — a term used to describe a smartphone with a bendable screen.
A slew of foldable devices have hit the international market this year, as electronics giants, mainly Chinese, look to catch up to Samsung in a smartphone category it pioneered.
Analysts have questioned how big the foldable category can actually get, given the high price of the devices and their lack of clear uses right now.
“They’re all lovely, everyone is excited by them, but do we really know how big the market is?” Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight, told CNBC via email.
“We are only at the beginning of the journey for the foldable story, that is a far from mature category.”
Foldables hit global market
Samsung launched its first foldable phone in 2019 and really created this category of smartphones. These devices have a single screen that can bend, giving users a much bigger display surface in a device that they can carry around in their pockets.
Since the Samsung Galaxy Fold was unveiled around four years ago, the South Korean giant has launched a number of other devices. The Galaxy Fold series opens outwards like a book, while the Galaxy Z Flip opens up like a traditional flip phone.
Samsung accounted for 80% of global foldable shipments in 2022, according to Canalys. The market expects foldable phone shipments to jump 111% year-on-year to 30 million in 2023.
Still, these devices account for just over 1% of the total smartphone market, according to IDC data.
That potential growth is what other firms are chasing, as they try to catch up to Samsung.
Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang told CNBC Wednesday that Motorola would be bringing a new version of its foldable Razr device out later this year. Lenovo owns Motorola.
Honor CEO George Zhao told CNBC in an interview last week that there are still a lot of challenges with foldable devices, particularly surrounding battery life, the weight of the devices and their high cost. Honor’s Magic Vs is priced at over $1,600.
But the push from electronics players to launch foldables comes from a desire for these brands to make inroads into the premium end of the smartphone market, which Samsung and Apple heavily dominate.
High-end smartphones — those that cost over $800 — accounted for 18% of the total handset market in 2022, up from 11% in 2020, Canalys data shows.
“As I see foldable devices, they are more connected to [an] attempt improving brand image through showcasing innovation than selling large volumes,” Runar Bjørhovde, analyst at Canalys, told CNBC via email.
The “wow factor” may have worn off for consumers now that Samsung has had folding smartphones on the market for a few years, according to Bjørhovde, who said that, ultimately, a lower price will be needed for rivals to compete with the South Korean electronics giant.
The foldable phone is “no longer surprising and unexpected, and a big part of the reason is Samsung’s big marketing investments that has normalised the form factor,” the analyst said.
He added that revolutionizing foldables will be close to impossible, moving forward.
“Developments will be more about gradual evolution and lowering price points. Lower price points will particularly be key for vendors out to challenge Samsung’s dominance,” Bjørhovde said.
Shares of Intuit popped about 9% on Friday, a day after the company reported quarterly results that beat analysts’ estimates and issued rosy guidance for the full year.
Intuit, which is best known for its TurboTax and QuickBooks software, said revenue in the fiscal third quarter increased 15% to $7.8 billion. Net income rose 18% to $2.82 billion, or $10.02 per share, from $2.39 billion, or $8.42 per share, a year earlier.
“This is the fastest organic growth that we have had in over a decade,” Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” on Thursday. “It’s really incredible growth across the platform.”
For its full fiscal year, Intuit said it expects to report revenue of $18.72 billion to $18.76 billion, up from the range of $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion it shared last quarter. Analysts were expecting $18.35 billion, according to LSEG.
“We’re redefining what’s possible with [artificial intelligence] by becoming a one-stop shop of AI-agents and AI-enabled human experts to fuel the success of consumers and small and mid-market businesses,” Goodarzi said in a release Thursday.
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Goldman Sachs analysts reiterated their buy rating on the stock and raised their price target to $860 from $750 on Thursday. The analysts said Intuit’s execution across its core growth pillars is “reinforcing confidence” in its growth profile over the long term.
The company’s AI roadmap, which includes the introduction of AI agents, will add additional upside, the analysts added.
“In our view, Intuit stands out as a rare asset straddling both consumer and business ecosystems, all while supplemented by AI-prioritization,” the Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note.
Analysts at Deutsche Bank also reiterated their buy rating on the stock and raised their price target to $815 from $750.
They said the company’s results were “reassuring” after a rocky two years and that they feel more confident about its ability to grow the consumer business.
“Longer term, we continue to believe Intuit presents a unique investment opportunity and we see its platform approach powering accelerated innovation with leverage, thus enabling sustained mid-teens or better EPS growth,” the analysts wrote in a Friday note.
FILE PHOTO: Apple CEO Tim Cook escorts U.S. President Donald Trump as he tours Apple’s Mac Pro manufacturing plant with in Austin, Texas, U.S., November 20, 2019.
Last week, Trump said he “had a little problem with Tim Cook,” and on Friday, he threatened to slap a 25% tariff on iPhones in a social media post.
Trump is upset with Apple’s plan to source the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. from its factory partners in India, instead of China. Cook officially confirmed this plan earlier this month during earnings.
Trump wants Apple to build iPhones for the U.S. market in the U.S. and has continued to pressure the company and Cook.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday.
Analysts said it would probably make more sense for Apple to eat the cost rather than move production stateside.
“In terms of profitability, it’s way better for Apple to take the hit of a 25% tariff on iPhones sold in the US market than to move iPhone assembly lines back to US,” wrote Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X.
UBS analyst David Vogt said that the potential 25% tariffs were a “jarring headline,” but that they would only be a “modest headwind” to Apple’s earnings, dropping annual earnings by 51 cents per share, versus a prior expectation of 34 cents per share under the current tariff landscape.
Experts have long held that a U.S.-made iPhone is impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.
Analysts have said that made in U.S.A. iPhones would be much more expensive, CNBC previously reported, with some estimates ranging between $1,500 to $3,500 to buy one at retail. Labor costs would certainly rise.
But it would also be logistically complicated.
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Supply chains and factories take years to build out, including installing equipment and staffing up. Parts that Apple imported to the United States for assembly might be subject to tariffs as well.
Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017 but it was only in recent years that the region was capable of building Apple’s latest devices.
“We believe the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the US is a fairy tale that is not feasible,” wrote Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a note on Friday.
Other analysts were wary about predicting how Trump’s threat ultimately plays out. Apple might be able to strike a deal with the administration — despite the eroding relationship — or challenge the tariffs in court.
For now, most of Apple’s most important products are exempt from tariffs after Trump gave phones and computers a tariff waiver — even from China — in April, but Apple doesn’t know how the Trump administration’s tariffs will ultimately play out beyond June.
“We’re skeptical,” that the 25% tariff will materialize, wrote Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers.
He wrote that Apple could try to preserve its roughly 41% gross margin on iPhones by raising prices in the U.S. by between $100 or $300 per phone.
It’s unclear how Trump intends to target Apple’s India-made iPhones. Rakers wrote that the administration could put specific tariffs on phone imports from India.
Apple’s operations in India continue to expand.
Foxconn, which assembles iPhones for Apple, is building a new $1.5 billion factory in India that could do some iPhone production, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp speaks during the Hill & Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center Auditorium in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2025.
The stock transactions occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday between $125.26 and $127.70 per share. Following the stock sales, Karp owned about 6.43 million shares of Palantir stock, worth about $787 million based on Thursday’s closing price.
The sales were connected to a series of automatic share sales to cover required tax withholding obligations tied to vesting restricted stock units, according to filings.
Other top executives at the Denver-based company also unloaded stock.
Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar sold about $21 million worth of Palantir stock, while co-founder and president Stephen Cohen dumped about $43.5 million in shares.
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Palantir shares have notched fresh highs in recent weeks as the company leapt above Salesforce in market value and into the top 10 most valuable U.S. tech firms.
The digital analytics company has benefited from bets on AI and a surge in government contracts as companies prioritize streamlining and President Donald Trump targets a federal overhaul with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.
The stock has outperformed its tech peers since the start of 2025, surging nearly 62%, but investors are paying a high multiple on shares.
In its earnings report earlier this month, the company lifted its full-year guidance due to AI adoption, but shares fell on international growth concerns.
“You don’t have to buy our shares,” Karp told CNBC as shares slumped. “We’re happy. We’re going to partner with the world’s best people and we’re going to dominate. You can be along for the ride or you don’t have to be.”