The foldable iPhone has generated so much anticipation that a device nobody outside Apple has handled is being credited with other companies’ pre-order records. The iPhone Ultra is expected to arrive in September at a rumoured price starting around £1,580 and up, entering a wide-fold category that both the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Huawei’s Pura X Max have already shipped into.
Xiaomi 18 Fold pre-orders trace back to a single post
The claim circulating is that the Xiaomi 18 Fold‘s pre-orders beat previous years by a wide margin, which would be firm evidence of something if it had come from Xiaomi itself. Instead, it originated from a single Weibo post by the leaker Ice Universe on 27 August.
Ice Universe has a solid record, particularly on Samsung hardware, though he has been wrong before and his beat is supply chain specifications rather than sales data. In the post he does not provide a pre-order figure at all; he says the 18 Fold looks poised to do well, which is a forecast.
The record-breaking pre-orders he actually cites belong to the Galaxy Z Fold 8, which he describes as selling very well abroad, with demand running past expectations. Xiaomi’s start, in his words, looks comparable to that, which is a comparison rather than a figure.
Somewhere between that post and the wider coverage, the record changed companies. Xiaomi opened its 100-yuan reservation window on 24 August and has not published a figure since, and no Chinese tech outlet has reported one either.
It is worth noting that Samsung is the exclusive display supplier for the iPhone Ultra, and there were reports in February that it was weighing an increase in production of those panels. A company tooling up for a rival’s launch has its own reasons to sound confident about it.
What foldable shipment numbers reveal about the wide-fold surge
The reader-facing question is simpler than the market one. If you are choosing between a wide fold and a normal phone this autumn, what matters is whether the category is genuinely growing or whether it is being talked into growing.
On that, the forecasts and the actual shipments do not agree with each other, and the gap is wide enough to warrant attention. Global foldable shipments fell 21.6% year on year in the first half of 2026, down to 5.1 million units. The 2025 total finished at 18.2 million units, up just 6%, the weakest growth the category has recorded in recent years.
The projected recovery to more than 22 million units in 2026 is a forecast covering a half of the year that has not yet happened. By 2030, foldables are still expected to account for less than 3% of all smartphone shipments.
If you already own a Fold 8 or a Pura X Max, none of this changes your phone. Huawei took 57% of book-type foldable shipments in the first half of the year against Samsung’s 18%.
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Image: phonearena.com
