Apple's Foldable iPhone Is Late, Expensive, and Might Still Work

Apple Arrives Late to the Foldable Party — But With a Price Tag That Could Define the Segment

Apple’s September 9 event has become something of a proxy for the future of the foldable phone. Not because Apple is leading the category — it isn’t — but because whatever it decides to charge for its first foldable iPhone will signal whether this remains a niche experiment or becomes a genuine mainstream tier.

Bank of America expects the company to unveil what it is calling the Ultra or Fold, a book-style device with dual OLED screens, the A20 Pro chip, 12GB of RAM, and storage up to 2TB. The price? Estimates point to $2,500. That is not a budget entry. It is a declaration of intent.

And it comes at a moment when Chinese manufacturers have already been shipping competitive foldables for years. Huawei and Xiaomi each revealed new foldable models in the days before Apple’s event. Their devices are thinner, lighter, cheaper, and have been iterating through multiple generations. Apple’s foldable is essentially a first-gen product arriving in a market where the competition is already on generation four or five.

Why $2,500 Could Be the Right Number

IDC’s Nabila Popal argues that the foldable iPhone will sell despite the steep price. Her reasoning is straightforward: Apple has spent two decades building an ecosystem so sticky that the hardest part of switching is not the hardware — it is leaving the iMessage group chats, the App Store purchases, the iCloud photos, the watch rings you have closed for three years.

Popal projects the foldable iPhone could generate more than $45 billion in revenue by the end of next year. That is an enormous figure for a single product category that currently accounts for single-digit share of the global smartphone market. But it is not implausible if Apple pulls the same move it pulled with the Apple Watch and AirPods — products that were late entrants in their respective categories but became dominant because the company refused to compromise on integration.

There is also the matter of scarcity. Popal notes Apple is excellent at manufacturing an aura of exclusivity. Limited supply, controlled distribution, and a pricing strategy that positions the device as luxury rather than utility — these are plays Apple has run before. The question is whether they scale to a category that, globally, is still a fraction of the market.

The Engineering Gamble

Apple’s biggest risk is not price. It is product. Foldable phones have a well-documented set of engineering problems: hinges that feel loose after months of use, creases that remain visible even on premium devices, displays that are thinner and therefore more fragile, and battery life that lags behind traditional slab phones.

Chinese manufacturers have been refining these issues for years. Huawei’s latest foldables feature crease-reduction technology that most reviewers consider near-invisible. Xiaomi has pushed titanium-hinge designs and ultra-thin glass. Both have shipped millions of units and gathered real-world durability data that Apple is about to start collecting.

Apple’s advantage is that it controls both the hardware and the software. A foldable phone is only as good as the apps that use its expanded screen real estate, and Apple has a track record of compelling developers to optimize for new form factors. The iPad Pro showed how far software integration can go when a company controls the entire stack. But the iPad is a tablet. The foldable iPhone is a phone — a category where ergonomics, pocketability, and one-handed use are non-negotiable.

If Apple can solve the crease problem and deliver a hinge that feels solid over thousands of folds, the device could validate the premium price. If it cannot, $2,500 becomes easy to mock.

Who Wins, Who Loses

Apple wins if the foldable iPhone becomes a status symbol that justifies its price through ecosystem lock-in and brand prestige. Chinese consumers, in particular, have shown willingness to pay a premium for domestic brands like Huawei — but they have also shown appetite for global brands when those brands deliver something genuinely new. Apple needs to be genuinely new, not just foldable.

Huawei and Xiaomi lose market share in China if Apple can replicate its iPhone dominance there. But Apple’s influence in China has been declining for years, and the foldable segment is not where the volume is. Chinese manufacturers are competing on price and features in a segment where margin matters less than adoption.

Apple loses if the device feels like a solved problem by the time it ships. If the crease is visible and the hinge creaks, the novelty fades fast. Second-gen foldable buyers are the hardest to convert — they know what they are getting into, and they expect refinement.

What Comes Next

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are also expected, with 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch displays, the A20 processor, larger batteries, smaller Dynamic Island, and camera improvements. Apple Watch Series 12, AirPods 5, an updated Apple TV 4K, and a HomePod mini round out the lineup. This is a crowded event for a company that typically spreads its launches across the year.

The foldable iPhone is the story because it is the unknown variable. Bank of America sees a $380 stock price and a strong buy rating. The market is pricing in confidence that Apple can enter a new category and own it. That history supports the bet — Apple has done it before. But the foldable market is different. It is not a greenfield. It is a arena where Huawei and Xiaomi have built serious expertise, and where consumers already have options that work well and cost half as much.

Apple’s foldable iPhone will either prove that ecosystem power trumps first-mover advantage or expose the limits of a strategy built on playing catch-up in categories the rest of the industry has already moved past. The September 9 event will tell us which.

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Sources: Bank of America Securities, IDC via Yahoo Finance. Price targets and revenue projections are analyst estimates and may not materialize.