I completely disagree. We are about to hit massive growth in the folding market in addition to the folding iPhone arriving in roughly 3 years time.
I'm not sure where you are coming up with these failure stats. Is the Fold 3 failing for countless consumers? I would imagine it's not. And that durability will only get stronger as the technology matures at an accelerated rate in short time. Look at the massive difference between the Fold 1.0 and 3.0
The outer screen on the Fold 3 is gorilla glass victus and isn't any more fragile than what we have on the iPhone and other smartphones. Not an issue with items in your pocket.
AR glasses are a separate category. Smartphones will continue to thrive and grow in innovation for years to come.
It's really not, you can go out there and find torture tests of the Fold 1 being folded hundreds of thousands of times before failure, and the Fold 1 is ancient folding technology by now. I did the math once but I completely forget it, I think it was like 50-100 folds per day for like 10 years.
Certainly there is more risk than with a non-folding phone, I don't think anyone is saying any different, but it's been so massively overblown, typically by those who probably have never even used one, let alone used it as a daily driver for a long period of time.