Now that foldable smartphones are a viable segment of the premium electronics market, Apple is working on its own foldable device—but it won’t be an iPhone. People familiar with Apple’s Taiwanese supply chain shared Thursday that the Cupertino-based tech giant is preparing a “larger” foldable device. The sources’ claims dovetail with earlier rumors regarding Apple’s development of a non-iPhone foldable.
In a paywalled DigiTimes report, sources said Apple has been working on its mysterious foldable for at least five years. Now, the company is said to be moving forward with scaling its design for mass production. Apple has mainly focused on developing a panel that meets its rigorous quality standards, those familiar with the matter said—an understandable axis to hinge a foldable on, given devices’ tendency to warp and break at their bending points after a good deal of use.
With limited information, it’s impossible to know whether Apple’s first foldable—if it ever actually hits the market—will be an iPad, some wacky iteration of the MacBook, or an entirely new device. In early 2022, a supply chain insider said Apple was experimenting with a folding tablet that seemingly blended the iPad and MacBook concepts. Notable Apple leaker Mark Gurman suspected the device would be a folding notebook with a built-in physical keyboard and trackpad or a dual-screen model with a virtual keyboard. Later that year, the industry analysis firm CCS Insight shared that Apple was more likely to release a folding iPad than a foldable iPhone; this would allow Apple to dive into the foldable game without risking its most popular device lineup.
Indeed, many analysts and consumers have eyed Apple as folding devices have gradually crept into the smartphone canon. A January report from Counterpoint Research showed that Android foldables have started eating into Apple’s premium smartphone market share: While Apple dominated three-quarters of the premium phone market in 2022, its share dropped to 71% in 2023.
Apple has a habit of seeing which technologies gain traction with consumers, then “improving” on them with their own versions a year or two later. (Whether you believe Apple’s iterations are improvements depends mainly on your hardware prowess and brand loyalty.) This, combined with the self-folding phone patent Apple filed last year, has many of us eager to see whether Apple decides to enter the foldable market and how. No matter what form Apple’s first foldable takes, it isn’t expected to hit shelves until 2025—if it shows up at all.
