Samsung says European sales of its newest large foldables are up 45 percent over last year's model, and the timing points at Apple's iPhone Duo.
In a blog post from its UK arm, the company said combined European sales of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra are 45 percent higher than those of the Galaxy Z Fold 7. It also said search volume for the Z8 series across Europe jumped 460 percent the week of September 6 to 12. Apple announced the iPhone Duo, its first folding phone, on September 9. Across all of September, when the Samsung phones launched, Z Fold 8 search volume was up 260 percent. The post never mentions Apple.
It also says nothing about the Z Flip 8. Samsung has previously said larger foldables make up about 80 percent of foldable purchases, so a strong Flip number would likely have been worth including. One plausible explanation is that Apple did not announce a flip-style phone, so the Duo gave shoppers no reason to look at that format.
Treat the numbers with care. They are the company's own figures, and a percentage with no base tells you little about volume. Search interest is not a purchase. The Fold 8 also launched in the same month as the Duo, and the post gives no way to separate a launch bump from an Apple bump.
Still, the pattern is plausible. A big-name entrant can make a niche category legible to shoppers who had ignored it, and foldables have been a niche for years. The open question is how many of those searchers end up buying a Samsung rather than the Duo itself.