In 2014, Apple and Samsung were duking it out to rule the U.S. smartphone market. Samsung was selling devices with large screens, and iPhone fans were demanding a response.

It took Apple some time, but the company finally released the iPhone 6, breaking with previous iterations and giving consumers a large-screen option. The iPhone won.

But more than a decade later, recent smartphone sales and shipment figures signal that the Apple-Samsung fight has returned. And once again, it’s all about the screen.

In the second quarter, shipments from Samsung surged in the U.S., with its market share rising from 23% to 31% from the prior period, according to data from Canalys. Apple’s market share during the quarter declined to 49% from 56%.

Apple remains on top of the U.S. smartphone market, taking the majority of new smartphone sales in the U.S. It’s often in second place around the world, but the recent slips points to turbulence for Apple for the first time in well over a decade.

That’s one reason investors have sent Apple shares down 7.5% this year, underperforming all of the U.S. megacap tech companies other than Tesla. Samsung’s stock, meanwhile, is up about 35% in 2025.

In July, Samsung introduced a pair of innovative new phones that feature foldable screens. One model, the Z Fold 7, can effectively turn into a tablet, while the Z Flip resembles an old-school flip phone with modern smartphone features. They were added to Samsung’s catalog of phones released this spring under its Galaxy brand, including a thin-and-light phone called the Galaxy S25 Edge. 

The devices are also getting a lot of traction on social media, particularly around durability tests.

One user posted a livestream that showed him bending the Z Fold 7 over 200,000 times in a row. The video has been clipped and shared widely on social media, with one version of the clip accumulating more than 15 million views on YouTube.

In the past month, Samsung’s premium devices, including the Z Fold 7, were mentioned over 50,000 times on social media, and 83% of those mentions were positive or neutral, according to data from Sprout Social, a social media analytics company.

The market share numbers aren’t just the result of user preferences. Much of the shift in shipment figures in the June quarter, analysts said, can be attributed to tariffs, which are causing “disruption” in the industry as smartphone makers use different strategies to minimize the impact on their business.

But Samsung’s gains also reflect the company’s ability to offer a much wider range of products at different prices compared to Apple. That includes low-end phones, which accounted for much of Samsung’s second-quarter U.S. improvement, as well as high-end devices that cost more than any individual iPhone.

Samsung’s Galaxy and Z phone lineup “stretches from $650 up to $2,400. That is a massive span of devices,” said Canalys analyst Runar Bjorhovde. “There is an idea that you can target people at every single price point, and you can meet them at every spot.”

The iPhone has pretty much looked the same since 2017 — a rectangular piece of glass with a touchscreen on the front, and a few cameras on the back. These days, the company offers a series of four slates ranging from $829 to $1,599. Samsung and others are starting to go beyond the so-called candy bar shape and experimenting with new form factors.

Apple is expected to start doing the same — beginning with a potential launch next month of a slimmer iPhone that will compete with Samsung’s Galaxy Edge.

“Apple is clearly betting that its 5.5mm Air model is going to lift its fortunes as testing suggests a strong desire for the new form factor,” wrote Loop Capital managing director John Donovan in May.

JPMorgan Chase analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote in a report last month that Apple may release a folding phone next year to compete with Samsung’s Z Fold.

“Investor focus has already turned to the 2026 fall launches with Apple expected to launch its first foldable iPhone as part of the iPhone 18 lineup in September 2026,” Chatterjee wrote.

Trying new form factors offers Apple the opportunity to sell devices at higher prices, according to Bjorhovde.

Apple’s most expensive phone, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, currently starts at $1,199 for 256GB of storage and can go up to $1,599 for a version with 1TB of storage. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, which was announced last week, starts at $1,999 for the 256GB version and tops out at $2,419 for the 1TB version.

Chatterjee said he thinks Apple’s version of a folding phone could start at $1,999. Apple declined to comment.

Samsung’s first folding phone was released in 2019, but got off to a rocky start. The initial launch was delayed after reviewers — including CNBC — discovered that the early devices would break along their folding crease.

But Samsung says this time is different, and that folding phones are finally ready to go mainstream, especially with respect to durability.

“There really are no longer trade-offs towards owning a foldable device,” said Drew Blackard, vice president of mobile product management at Samsung Electronics America.

The South Korean company doesn’t provide sales numbers, but Blackard said the Galaxy Z Fold 7, the latest version, had 25% more preorders than any previous Samsung folding phone and that sales are outpacing the device’s predecessor by nearly 50%.

“Samsung with the foldable is able to actually optimize for innovation,” said Bjorhovde. “Try to be ahead, show that something is different, and there’s a certain halo effect from that.”

According to Counterpoint Research, a firm that estimates smartphone sales to customers, Samsung’s sell-through increased 16% during the June quarter, thanks to demand for high-end devices, including a “slight boost” from the slim S25 Edge.

The rise of artificial intelligence is also heralding new form factors for consumer electronics that could one day replace the iPhone.

OpenAI in May acquired the startup of former Apple design guru Jony Ive for $6.5 billion. The AI startup plans to develop the next generation of hardware, and other AI startups have released pins, pendants and glasses that rely on users’ voice to control the devices.

Samsung devices, as well as other Android phones, get access to Google’s Gemini, which is widely considered to be one of the best AI models alongside OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Gemini has several features that users can’t get with Siri and Apple Intelligence.

Blackard said folding phones, with their larger displays, are well suited for AI. Google’s circle-to-search feature, which allows a user to simply circle something on the screen that they’d like to learn more about, is an example, Blackard said.

On a Samsung folding phone, he said, users can still see the original screen with the content they circled, as well as another screen with supplementary information.

“It’s much more productive being able to go back and forth,” Blackard said.

Investors have worried that Apple’s AI delays, including its next-generation Siri that’s now scheduled to come out next year, could start hurting sales. But many analysts say that Apple’s brand loyalty and lock-in will give it a period of years before iPhone customers start defecting for competitors.

Chatterjee told CNBC that Apple’s strategy with devices is to wait until a technology is ready for the mainstream before embracing it. That time may be now for foldable devices.

Apple has “never been about trying to be the first to market,” Chatterjee said. “It’s about being watchful, seeing a technology mature, knowing that there are no big roadblocks to that technology adoption, and then moving ahead.”

OpenAI is preparing to sell around $6 billion in stock as part of a secondary sale that would value the company at roughly $500 billion, CNBC confirmed Friday.

The shares would be sold by current and former employees to investors including SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group and Thrive Capital, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be named due to the confidential nature of the discussions. The talks are still in early stages and the details could change.

Bloomberg was first to report the discussions. All three firms are existing investors in OpenAI, but Thrive Capital could lead the round, as CNBC previously reported. SoftBank, Dragoneer and Thrive Capital did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

OpenAI’s valuation has grown exponentially since the artificial intelligence startup launched its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022.

The company announced a $40 billion funding round in March at a $300 billion, by far the largest amount ever raised by a private tech company. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced its most recent $8.3 billion in fresh capital tied to that funding round.

Last week, OpenAI announced GPT-5, its latest and most advanced large-scale AI model. OpenAI said the model is smarter, faster and “a lot more useful,” particularly across domains like writing, coding and health care. But it’s been a rocky roll out, as some users complained about losing access to OpenAI’s prior models.

“We for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them, even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a post on X.

WATCH: OpenAI staffer reportedly to sell $6 billion in stock to SoftBank and other investors

The Bullish IPO this week took on added significance, perhaps because of the company name.

When shares of the Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange more than doubled out of the gate on Wednesday before finishing the day up 84%, it was the latest sign that the tech IPO bulls are back in business.

In July, design software vendor Figma more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut, and a month earlier shares of crypto firm Circle soared 168% in their first day on the Big Board.

Wall Street has been waiting a long time for this.

Three years ago, steep inflation and soaring interest effectively closed the market for public offerings. Tech stocks tanked and private capital dried up, forcing cash-burning startups to turn their attention away from growth and toward efficiency and profitability.

The roadblock appeared to be loosening earlier this year, when companies like StubHub and Klarna filed their prospectuses, but then President Donald Trump roiled the markets in April with his plans for sweeping tariffs. Roadshows were put on indefinite hold.

The president’s tariff agenda has since stabilized a bit, and investor money is pouring into tech, pushing the Nasdaq to record levels, up more than 40% from this year’s low in April. Optimism is growing that the hefty backlog of high-valued startups will continue to clear as CEOs and venture capitalists gain confidence that the public markets will welcome their top-tier companies.

Ahead of Figma’s debut, NYSE president Lynn Martin told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that immense demand for that offering could “open the floodgates” for the rest of the market. And earlier this week, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman told “Fast Money” that there’s a “very healthy list” of companies looking to IPO in the second half of this year, ahead of the holiday season.

“I’ve been meeting a lot of CEOs, getting them prepared to think about what they want in the public markets and where they’re going,” Friedman said.

There are more than two-dozen venture-backed U.S. tech companies valued at $10 billion or more, according to CB Insights. StubHub has updated its prospectus, suggesting an offering is coming soon.

“The IPO window is open,” said Rick Heitzmann, a partner at venture firm FirstMark, in an interview with CNBC’s “Closing Bell” this week. “You’ve seen across industry, broad-based support for IPOs, and therefore, we’re advising companies we’re investing in to get ready and go public.”

Another big topic among VCs and bankers is the regulatory environment.

The Biden administration took heat from startup investors for cracking down on big acquisitions, mostly attributable to Lina Khan’s perceived heavy hand at the Federal Trade Commission, while also failing to ease restrictions that they say make it less appealing for companies to go public than to stay private.

Paul Atkins, the new head of the SEC, said in July he wants to “make IPOs great again,” by removing some of the impediments around the complexity of disclosures and litigation risk. He hasn’t offered many specific recommendations.

Friedman told CNBC that the first conversation she had with Atkins after he took the job was about making it easier and more attractive for companies to go public.

“The conversation was constructive along many fronts, looking at disclosure requirements, the proxy process, other things that really make it harder for companies to be public and navigate the public markets,” Friedman said. “He’s as interested as we are, so hopefully we’ll turn that into great action.”

In addition to the big gains notched by Bullish, Figma and Circle, the public markets welcomed online banking provider Chime with a 37% gain last month and trading app eToro with a 29% pop in May. The health-tech market has seen two IPOs: Hinge Health and Omada Health.

But it was the roaring debuts of Circle and Figma that sparked chatter of a new bull market for IPOs. Figma jumped 250% on IPO day after pricing shares a dollar ahead of an updated range. Circle’s value more than doubled after the stablecoin issuer also priced above the expected range.

That sort of price action reignited a debate ahead of the last IPO boom in 2020 and 2021, when venture capitalist Bill Gurley made the case that big first-day pops suggest intentionally mispriced offerings that hurt the company and hand easy money to new investors. Gurley has advocated for direct listings, where companies list shares at a price that effectively matches demand.

As Figma was hitting the market, Gurley was back at it, referring to the big gains as an “expected & fully intentional” outcome benefitting clients of major investment banks

“They bought it at $33 last night and can sell it today for over $90,” he wrote. In a follow-up post, he said, “I would have loved to see DLs replace IPOs — it just makes sense to match supply/demand. But Wall Street may just be too addicted to the massive customer give-aways.”

Lise Buyer, founder of IPO advisory firm Class V Group, wrote on LinkedIn that the company gets to make the call on where it prices the stock and that plenty of thought gets put into the process. Also, in the IPO, companies are selling only a small percentage of outstanding shares — in Figma’s case roughly 7% — so if they deliver on results, “there will very likely be plenty of future opportunities to sell more shares at higher prices.”

That’s already happening.

Circle said this week that it’s offering another 10 million shares in a secondary offering. And on Friday’s, CNBC’s Leslie Picker reported that bankers for CoreWeave, which is up 150% since its March IPO, orchestrated some block trades this week.

But Buyer warns that tech markets have a history of overheating. While there’s always a difference between what institutions are willing to pay in an IPO and what exuberant retail investors will pay, it’s currently “a gap like we haven’t really seen since 1999, 2000,” Buyer told CNBC, adding “and, of course, we know how that ended.”

Compared to the dot-com bubble, businesses that are going public now have sizable revenue and actual fundamentals, but that doesn’t mean the IPO pops are sustainable, she said.

“It’s almost like we had several years of Prohibition,” Buyer said, referring to a period a century ago when alcohol was banned in the U.S. “Folks, in some cases, are drinking to excess in the IPO market.”

WATCH: Bankers lead block trades in CoreWeave