It’s neither a game-changer that will shake up the industry nor a mere imitation of existing trends.

The foldable screen market, which has long been under the radar in the consumer electronics space, is finally set to welcome its most highly anticipated new entrant.

Multiple supply chain sources confirm that Apple’s first foldable iPhone has entered the DVT (Design Verification Test) phase and is expected to launch alongside the iPhone 18 series in September 2026. Since Samsung released the world’s first mass-produced foldable smartphone in 2017, Apple has spent a full nine years observing this market segment.

Over those nine years, foldable screens have evolved from experimental concepts in labs to mature product lines that have gone through multiple iterations in the Android ecosystem. Samsung has used them to solidify its position in the global high-end market, Huawei has leveraged them for a strong rebound in China’s premium segment, while Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo have driven prices down from the 10,000-yuan range to the 5,000-yuan tier.

Discussions about this product tend to oscillate between two extremes: on one end is the “Apple will disrupt the industry” narrative, suggesting that after nine years of preparation, Apple will redefine the foldable screen category; on the other end are doubts that “nine years late means just following the crowd,” arguing that in a sluggish smartphone market, with Apple’s own innovation slowing down and lagging in the AI era, a single foldable device won’t drive Apple’s growth, let alone revolutionize the industry.

Setting aside Apple fan biases and brand myths, we need to objectively address a core question: In today’s market, what can this foldable iPhone, arriving nine years late, actually bring to the industry?

01

Nine Years of Observation: Not a Strategic Late Entry, But a Conservative Move to Fill Product Gaps

Many in the market portray Apple’s nine-year wait-and-see approach as a “late-mover advantage” strategy, arguing that Apple has never been a pioneer in new categories but has a knack for turning niche segments into mainstream hits.

However, reviewing Apple’s new product history over the past decade, this narrative is far from flawless. Admittedly, Apple has never halted its technical preparations for foldable screens, filing core patents as early as 2016 and continuously updating patents related to foldable hinges, flexible displays, and drop protection in subsequent years.

But the delayed mass production isn’t simply about “waiting for the product to meet standards.” A more fundamental reason is Apple’s conservatism and caution toward new segments, along with a continuously declining risk tolerance after several recent product setbacks.

Over the past decade, Apple hasn’t shied away from trying to create new growth engines: the Apple Car project, nearly a decade in the making with massive R&D investment, was officially shut down in 2024, leading to significant talent exodus and becoming Apple’s largest-ever failed new product initiative.

The much-hyped mixed-reality headset Vision Pro, launched in 2024, fell far short of market expectations, with its first-year sales target slashed repeatedly from millions to a fraction of that, leading to substantial supply chain cutbacks. It failed to replicate the success of the iPhone or iPad, instead becoming a classic case of “acclaim without sales” for Apple.

These two failures have shattered the myth of “Apple’s entry defines the category.” Facts prove that Apple’s late-mover strategy isn’t a universal formula; in new categories beyond smartphones, it faces the same challenges of insufficient market education, unmet user expectations, and lagging ecosystem development.

Meanwhile, in the foldable screen segment, the Android camp has spent nine years completing the full cycle of technical trial-and-error, market education, and supply chain maturation. In my view, Apple’s current entry is more of a gap-filling move in its high-end product lineup than a disruptive innovation akin to the iPhone 4.

A more realistic backdrop is the prolonged slump in the entire smartphone industry, stuck in a zero-sum game.

IDC data shows that global smartphone shipments have declined year-over-year for multiple consecutive years, with no more low-hanging fruit in the market. Foldable screens, as one of the few bright spots for industry growth, saw global shipments of around 20 million units in 2025, still accounting for less than 2% of the total market.

In other words, this remains a niche segment, incapable of single-handedly reversing the industry’s fortunes, let alone disrupting it with a single product.

02

Core Weakness: Falling Behind in AI, Foldable Screens Struggle to Deliver Experience Breakthroughs

More critical than the industry’s macro environment is Apple’s comprehensive lag in the AI era, which happens to be the core of current high-end smartphone competition and the key to whether foldable screens can achieve experience breakthroughs.

Since 2024, generative AI has become the core competitive arena in the global smartphone industry. Android flagships now come standard with on-device large models, AI-powered productivity tools, AI imaging, and AI multitasking interactions. The large-screen form factor of foldables is deeply tied to AI productivity scenarios.

For example, large screens display AI-generated content, split-screen handles AI tasks, and multi-window runs AI tools. The core value of foldable screens has shifted from “a large screen that folds” to “a morphable terminal adapting to AI productivity.”

However, Apple has clearly fallen behind by more than a step in generative AI.

Recently, Apple executives openly admitted that the company lags behind industry leaders in developing and deploying generative AI large models. The AI capabilities of iOS remain stuck at basic voice assistants and image processing levels, with on-device large model deployment progressing far slower than the Android camp. Apple has even had to partner with OpenAI and Google to integrate third-party AI tools into iPhones to address its capability gaps.

This raises an unavoidable question: even if Apple creates foldable hardware with industry-leading crease control and hinge feel, without matching AI capabilities, it remains just a “foldable iPhone” incapable of delivering a fundamental productivity experience breakthrough.

Compared to the Android camp, which iterates hardware and deeply integrates foldable screens with AI capabilities to form a complete “hardware form + AI capability” experience loop, Apple lags in core AI capabilities. Whether it can disrupt the industry through hardware form alone remains a major question mark.

03

Elusive Smartphone Growth Intensifies Industry Competition

The market’s greatest expectation for Apple’s foldable screen is that it could activate Apple’s massive iPhone user base, turning foldable screens from a niche to a mainstream product.

Multiple agencies predict that Apple’s entry could capture nearly 30% of the foldable screen market share, boosting the market size from 20 million to over 50 million units. However, this forecast overlooks Apple’s own growth dilemmas and the practical barriers facing foldable screens.

In fact, iPhone’s growth bottlenecks have long been evident.

As Apple’s core revenue pillar, iPhone accounts for over 50% of total revenue, but its shipments have faced sustained pressure: in China, Huawei’s strong comeback continues to erode Apple’s high-end share; in Europe, regulatory policies and local brand competition have stalled growth; in India, growth relies mainly on entry-level iPhones, with extremely low penetration of high-end models.

Apple urgently needs a new high-end product to stabilize its over 60% share of the $600+ premium market, and foldable screens are one of its few remaining options.

However, expecting foldable screens to activate a vast base of existing iPhone users is unrealistic. Data shows that over 200 million iPhone users worldwide still use models over three years old. The core reason these users delay upgrades is not the lack of innovative form factors like foldable screens but that smartphones have entered an era of performance surplus, where daily use on older models is perfectly adequate, leaving no compelling reason to upgrade.

Moreover, multiple supply chain sources indicate that the starting price for the Chinese version of the foldable iPhone is expected to be around 14,999 yuan, far exceeding the budget of most iPhone users—over 60% of Apple’s user base purchases entry-level digital series models, with only a niche segment able to afford flagship models priced above 10,000 yuan.

Secondly, Apple may not solve the core pain points that have plagued the foldable screen industry for nine years. The market widely believes that with its unified iOS ecosystem, Apple can address the app adaptation issues that have eluded the Android camp.

However, this judgment ignores a reality: even Apple’s own iPads still face insufficient app adaptation, with many developers unwilling to optimize exclusively for iPads, let alone for a new foldable iPhone.

The Android camp’s adaptation challenges stem not from system fragmentation but from the small user base of foldable screens, which makes developer ROI too low. Even Apple cannot change this commercial logic. Until foldable screen user numbers exceed tens of millions, developers lack incentive for deep large-screen optimizations.

Of course, physical limitations of foldable screens persist. Even if Apple integrates Vision Pro’s display technology, it can only mitigate creases and is unlikely to eliminate the physical traces of folding flexible screens entirely. Liquid metal hinges can balance thinness and durability but cannot solve the issue of foldable devices generally weighing over 250g, far heavier than conventional flagships.

High repair costs, a consistent user concern, remain another hurdle. Current mainstream foldable screen repairs cost 3,000-5,000 yuan, and Apple’s official repair costs have always been at the industry’s high end, meaning foldable iPhone repairs will be even pricier. Combined with lower resale values, the “affordable to buy, expensive to repair” dilemma will directly suppress ordinary users' purchase intentions.

Many believe Apple’s entry will seal the fate of the foldable screen industry, but the opposite is true. Apple’s arrival will not end competition in the foldable segment; instead, it will push an already cutthroat market into an even more brutal zero-sum phase.

Apple’s brand power will indeed siphon some high-end market users, particularly those unwilling to leave the iOS ecosystem but eager to try foldable screens, directly impacting Samsung and Huawei’s footholds in the premium foldable market.

However, expecting Apple to significantly expand the foldable market is unrealistic. Overall smartphone consumption demand has saturated, with users’ upgrade willingness continuously declining, and high-end electronics face downward pressure on spending power. As a premium product priced in the 10,000-yuan range, foldable screens are unlikely to see explosive growth.

Meanwhile, the Android camp has already kicked off intense competition. Samsung has released 4:3 aspect ratio foldable models to compete directly and even plans triple-folding products to expand its technological lead. Huawei released a new foldable model six months early to secure its domestic high-end market position, leveraging the HarmonyOS ecosystem to solidify its base. Domestic players like Xiaomi, OPPO, and Honor have driven foldable screen prices down to the 5,000-yuan tier, creating differentiated advantages in the mid-to-high-end market.

After Apple’s entry, the foldable screen market will not see a single dominant player but instead a landscape of high-end market battles among Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, with domestic players engaging in close combat in the mid-to-low-end segment. Small and medium-sized manufacturers will see their survival space further squeezed, and industry Matthew effects will intensify.

In the long run, foldable screens remain one of the few innovation directions for the smartphone industry in the coming years, but their development has never hinged on a single product from a single vendor. Apple’s entry merely adds a heavyweight player to this nine-year-old segment rather than bringing disruptive revolution.

Returning to the core question: what does this foldable iPhone, nine years late, actually mean for the industry?

It’s neither a revolutionary product that disrupts the industry nor a meaningless copycat move.

I am more inclined to view it as a product line gap-filling move by Apple, necessitated by stagnating smartphone growth, repeated new product failures, and falling behind in the AI era, to stabilize its high-end market share and seek new revenue growth points.

The smartphone industry has been quiet for too long—so long that the market expects a hardware form factor gap-filling move, delayed by nine years, to be a disruptive innovation. But what truly changes the industry should be the technologies and experiences behind the screen that fundamentally alter user value.

Original content from Xinmou

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