20% of Motorola Razr users came from an iPhone
Not embracing new technologies can cost companies their lead. We have seen this happen to Nokia and BlackBerry. Apple continues to stubbornly avoid the foldable form factor and this seems to be helping companies like Motorola.
Motorola yesterday unveiled the Razr Plus and Razr 2023, bringing the total number of clamshell phones in its portfolio to four. Speaking to CNET, Allison Yi, the company's head of North America product operations, revealed that 20 percent of new Razr buyers previously had an iPhone. The company said that no other family of products has received this much attention from iPhone users.
"This is definitely the family that we have the most amount of iPhone users switching to us." - Motorola Allison Yi
In 2022, 1.21 billion smartphones were shipped, which is the lowest total shipment count since 2013. Out of these, 1.19 billion were slab phones. Apple was the second biggest player with total sales of 226 million, but its shipments declined by 4 percent compared to 2021.
Foldable phones grew a staggering 75.5 percent in 2022. Sales climbed to 14.2 million units and are projected to reach 21.4 million units this year after an increase of 50 percent.
Over the course of the next four years, bendable phone shipments are expected to grow at a faster rate than conventional phones. So even though more people will continue to buy slab phones, there is clear demand for foldable phones and Apple seems to be missing out by not producing one.
Since Samsung dominated the foldable market in 2022 with a share of 80 percent, it's safe to assume that a very small number of iPhone users ditched Apple for Motorola. But even if the numbers were not big enough to put a dent in Apple shipments this year, they will start to matter as time passes.
Also, we are more accustomed to seeing reports which talk about Android users switching to iOS. Today's report shows that if there is one thing that can get Apple users to ditch the company and exclusive features like iMessage which keeps them glued to the ecosystem, it's a new form factor.
Apple apparently does have a foldable product in the pipeline but it isn't expected to be released until 2025 and it might not even be a foldable iPhone.
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