Apple (AAPL) built the modern smartphone business by making existing technologies feel inevitable.
It may be getting ready to try the same thing again.
The company is expected to unveil its first foldable iPhone at a price around $1,999, entering a category that Samsung, Huawei, Google, and others have spent years trying to push into the mainstream.
So far, not quite successfully.
Foldables still make up just a single-digit share of the global smartphone market, Reuters reported, hampered by familiar complaints: visible screen creases, shorter battery life, weaker cameras, and the question of whether consumers really need a phone that unfolds into something bigger.
That timing indicates Apple believes those problems are finally manageable.
And the financial stakes are enormous.
The iPhone still generates roughly half of Apple’s revenue, and IDC predicts shipments of traditional non-foldable smartphones will fall by nearly 1.4% in 2026.
By contrast, shipments of foldables are expected to grow nearly 30%.
The foldable iPhone means more than just another expensive device for Apple.
It’s a gamble that the next meaningful smartphone upgrade cycle might be driven by changing the physical shape of the phone itself.
Apple is arriving late to a market others spent years fixing
Apple won’t be able to claim it invented the foldable phone.
Maybe that’s the point.
The company’s history is littered with products that hit the market after competitors had already exposed many of the weaknesses.
Foldable phones have been on that road for close to a decade.
Royole, a Chinese display maker, is credited with shipping the first foldable smartphone in 2018. The FlexPai had a 7.8-inch screen that folded outward, but the software and a heavy plastic-hinge design received poor reviews, Reuters said.
Samsung then responded with a far bigger comeback.
The $2,000 Galaxy Fold was supposed to be the first mass-market foldable, but it became a cautionary tale when review units broke their displays. Some reviewers also peeled off a protective layer they thought was a standard screen protector.
Samsung has recalled the review units and delayed the product.
The industry kept moving.
Motorola has brought back the Razr as a foldable clamshell. Huawei played with an outward folding display. Microsoft had previously paired two individual screens with a hinge for the Surface Duo before ultimately discontinuing the device.
Google entered the fray in 2023 with the $1,799 Pixel Fold.
By 2024, Huawei had pushed the category even further with a $2,800 tri-fold smartphone, and Samsung launched its own multi-folding phone in late 2025.
Years of experimentation count because many of the problems Apple would have faced earlier are better known now.
For example, Samsung’s latest Fold 8, which had been investing in display technology for years, greatly minimized the visible center crease.
That gives Apple an edge familiar to old hands at watching the company. It does not need to solve the first-generation problems of the industry. It has to convince consumers that the latest generation product in the industry is finally worth buying.
Apple’s biggest challenge may be convincing consumers they need a foldable
But engineering problems are only one obstacle. The tougher question is whether consumers actually want the product.
Interest in foldable smartphones has been great but the market for them is still nascent.
Samsung currently controls roughly 40% of the global foldable market, according to Counterpoint data, while Huawei has about 30%.
Together, two companies control around 70% of the segment. Yet foldables still represent only a small portion of overall smartphone sales. That suggests Apple isn’t merely fighting Samsung for existing foldable buyers. It needs to expand the entire category. The design could help.
Apple is expected to adopt what Reuters describes as a passport-style foldable rather than a taller book-shaped design.
The wider proportions make more sense for video, as they are closer to the native aspect ratio of many types of media, helping to avoid the large black borders that can be seen on taller displays.
That could be a simple consumer pitch to Apple.
The company could instead market the device as a premium iPhone that becomes a larger screen for video, gaming, photos and entertainment whenever users want it, rather than marketing it primarily as a productivity tool.
Price will continue to be a big hurdle.
The anticipated device is said to be more expensive than a regular flagship smartphone, costing around $1,999.
So consumers will have to decide the extra screen is worth the cost, which basically means paying laptop prices for a phone.
Apple is arriving late to a market it could still reshape.
Apple could reshape a market Samsung currently leads
This opportunity is about much more than just selling a shiny new iPhone. Apple’s entry could alter the economics of the entire foldable category.
IDC expects global foldable-phone shipments to increase nearly 30% in 2026.
That growth comes in the face of an expected 1.4% drop in shipments of non-foldable smartphones.
The divergence is substantial.
The smartphone industry has been a mature one for years, with consumers holding onto their devices for longer and annual hardware upgrades becoming ever more incremental. Foldables give manufacturers something they no longer often find in the traditional smartphone market: a product that looks different.
More Apple:
- Apple rewrites how Americans pay for iPhones
- Bank of America doubles down on Apple stock ahead of earnings
- Apple’s iPhone 18 AI bet hides a pricing trap
It could give consumers a reason to upgrade sooner.
Apple’s entry should drive competition at the premium end of the market but foldables are still small enough for a number of companies to grow, said Tarun Pathak, Counterpoint research director.
That’s a fascinating setup for Samsung.
Samsung has endured years of cost and embarrassment from early foldable development and now leads the category. Apple may be able to take advantage of those years of experimentation without enduring the same public failures.
Huawei is in the same boat.
With nearly 30% share of the foldable market, it has already created meaningful consumer demand for the form factor, especially with the upgrade to tri-fold devices.
But Apple has one more weapon: its ecosystem.
You don’t always have to convince existing Samsung or Huawei owners to switch to the fold.
It can start with the huge base of installed iPhone customers, and try to convince some of them that their next upgrade should be a fold.
The foldable iPhone could be an unusually important test for Apple stock
The launch matters to investors because Apple’s flagship business needs new sources of growth.
The iPhone accounts for about half of Apple’s sales.
Thus, even relatively small changes in the iPhone upgrade cycle matter to Apple’s overall financial performance.
A successful foldable would do a couple of things for Apple.
The $1,999 price will increase the selling price of the customers that prefer the product.
For some users, a physically different device might lead to an earlier upgrade than they would otherwise make.
And if Apple expands the foldable market rather than simply taking share in it, the company could establish another premium tier above its standard iPhones.
But the opposite risk is there.
Foldables have been niche for years for a reason. Instead of hordes of consumers embracing folding screens, they’ve put up with larger phones, incremental camera upgrades and longer replacement cycles.
So Apple is not entering an obviously proven mass market.
It is betting that the technology has finally reached enough maturity to change the behavior of consumers for its brand, software and ecosystem.
That’s what makes this launch more significant than another annual iPhone refresh.
Samsung and Huawei have already shown that phone makers can make fancy folding phones. Apple now has to prove that millions more consumers actually want one.
And if Apple does pull it off, the most important thing about its $1,999 foldable might not be how many units the first generation sells.
It may be whether Apple can do for foldables what the original iPhone did for touchscreens: turn a technology consumers have seen before into something they suddenly believe they need.
Related: Apple’s $1,999 foldable iPhone creates strange twist for Samsung
