Samsung is selling refurbished Galaxy Z Fold 7 phones for more than new ones

This is a pricing-integrity problem more than a demand story. When refurbished SKUs print above new-device street prices, the secondary channel stops being a value proposition and starts cannibalizing the brand’s own promotion stack, which can compress conversion on both refurbished and new inventory. The immediate winner is the new-device channel, because rational buyers will step up to new at essentially no incremental cost; the loser is Samsung’s margin mix if this forces deeper discounting or more aggressive trade-in subsidies to clear refurbished stock.

The second-order effect is on partner economics. If Samsung’s owned ecommerce can undercut its own refurbished offering, third-party resellers and carrier channels lose pricing power, which typically shows up first as wider promotional intensity and then as lower ASPs across the category over the next 1-2 quarters. That matters for foldables because the category still needs premium-price credibility; repeated inversion between new and refurbished weakens residual values and may reduce future trade-in proceeds, subtly raising effective acquisition cost for repeat upgraders.

From a trading standpoint, this is not a thesis breaker for the handset franchise, but it is a warning that demand may be more promotion-dependent than the headline product cycle suggests. The near-term catalyst is pricing normalization: if the current new-device discounts are temporary, Samsung can clean this up quickly; if not, it signals inventory pressure and weak elasticity, which is more negative for gross margin into the next earnings print. The contrarian read is that this could actually be a sign Samsung is comfortable using foldables as a traffic driver and willing to sacrifice some margin to defend ecosystem lock-in, which would be bullish for unit share but bearish for near-term profitability.