Apple's foldable iPhone was a decade in the making — here's why it took so long
Apple is set to unveil its first foldable iPhone on September 9, and two of the most reliable sources in tech journalism have now explained why it took the company a full decade to get here. Bloomberg (Gurman) and the Financial Times both paint the same picture: deliberate caution, not indifference. The device — expected to carry a price tag north of $2,000 — could be called the iPhone Ultra or iPhone Duo.
The wait
Apple's foldable ambitions go back further than most people realize. The company patented a foldable hinge design in 2011, years before Samsung shipped a single Galaxy Z Fold. Experiments with flexible screens started in 2018, and active development of the device has been running for at least eight years.
Former Apple engineer Radu Reit, speaking to the Financial Times, put the core problem plainly: flexible displays cost thousands of dollars apiece in the mid-2010s, and the foldable segment was far too small to justify the engineering spend. Apple could have built one earlier — it just wouldn't have made business sense.
The stumbles of competitors reinforced that caution. Samsung's first foldables generated a wave of warranty claims over cracked and delaminating screens. Huawei delayed its Mate X in 2019 after Samsung's Galaxy Fold review-unit failures made headlines — a sign, per CNBC, that even established players were learning the hard way. Apple watched, waited, and kept its brand off a product category that wasn't ready.
The market reality
The foldable segment boomed after Samsung's 2019 debut — up 800% in 2020 — then quickly plateaued. By 2026, foldables still account for only around 2% of global smartphone shipments. Apple is entering a niche, not a mass market, and pricing the device accordingly.
Both Bloomberg and the Financial Times report that Apple originally aimed to stay under the $1,999 psychological threshold. A spike in memory component costs pushed that target out of reach. Final pricing arrives September 9, but Vodafone Australia's early listing suggested the top configuration could exceed $3,000.
What to expect
The launch falls squarely on John Ternus, who became Apple's CEO in early September 2026. He led hardware engineering through the device's development, which makes this introduction his first major test in the top job. US carriers Verizon and AT&T; are expected to position the phone as an ultra-premium offering, with analysts forecasting supply constraints and 4–6 week shipping delays at launch.
Samsung has dominated the $31 billion foldable market for seven years. Apple's entry won't reshape that overnight, but it will force the question of whether durability has finally caught up with the promise.
