Apple unveiled its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, at Wednesday’s fall event in Cupertino, marking the biggest redesign to the iPhone lineup in years. The device opens into a 7.6 inch inner display, the largest screen ever put on an iPhone, and closes down to a 5.4 inch outer display for one handed use. Pricing starts at 1,999 dollars for the 256GB model, climbing up through 512GB, 1TB and 2TB configurations, with pre orders opening October 16 and units shipping October 23. New CEO John Ternus led the keynote, his first as Apple’s chief executive after taking over from Tim Cook at the start of the month.
How does the price compare to Samsung’s foldable
Apple’s pricing lands almost exactly where analysts expected, and notably close to Samsung’s own foldable flagship. The Galaxy Z Fold8 starts around 100 dollars cheaper at retail, which means Apple did not try to dramatically undercut its biggest foldable rival the way some reports predicted earlier this year. Where Apple appears to have an edge is stylus support, since the Duo is expected to work with Apple Pencil while Samsung dropped S Pen compatibility starting with the Z Fold7 in order to shave down thickness and weight.
What is actually new inside the foldable design
Beyond the dual displays, the Duo runs on Apple’s A20 Pro chip paired with a custom vapor chamber and dual battery architecture, aimed at solving the heat and battery life problems that have plagued foldables from every manufacturer. The camera system includes a 48 megapixel main sensor and an ultra wide lens, though notably no dedicated telephoto camera, a gap Samsung’s Z Fold8 shares. Software features lean into the split screen format, letting owners run two full apps side by side, open two windows of the same app for things like comparison shopping, or keep a conversation going with the new Siri AI assistant while working in another app on the second half of the screen.
Why is Samsung trolling Apple on launch day
This is where the day got more entertaining than a typical Apple keynote. Samsung’s official U.S. social account posted a string of jabs throughout the event, needling Apple over how long it took to enter the foldable category and mocking the accessory lineup as an afterthought without real substance. Hours before Apple’s presentation even started, Samsung had already released a commercial branded around welcoming Apple to the foldable market, leaning hard into claims that the Z Fold8 is lighter and thinner than anything Apple was about to announce. Samsung’s own research team told reporters that weight remains the single hardest engineering problem in foldable design, a not so subtle shot aimed directly at Apple’s newcomer status in the category.
How big of a business opportunity is a foldable actually
Foldables remain a small slice of the overall smartphone market, expected to make up roughly 2.2% of global units this year according to research firm IDC, rising slowly to around 3.1% by 2030. But because foldables carry a much higher price tag than standard phones, that same sliver of unit sales is expected to generate close to 7% of total smartphone revenue this year, climbing toward 10% by the end of the decade. That math is likely why Apple decided the category was finally worth entering, even as Huawei continues to dominate foldable sales in China and Samsung holds the lead across most of the rest of the world.
What happens next for Apple’s stock and the rest of the lineup
Apple also announced the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, both getting a 100 dollar price increase tied to rising memory costs, along with the Apple Watch Series 12, Watch Ultra 4 and updated AirPods 5. Apple shares dipped modestly in the hours after the event, which analysts note is a fairly normal pattern for iPhone launch days, with the stock historically recovering and posting gains in the 60 days following past reveals. Whether the Duo becomes Apple’s next major growth driver or a niche experiment will likely take those same 60 days, and a lot more real world hands-on time, to sort out.
