Apple harvests the foldable market Samsung spent years building
By Aoife Gallagher · Reporting from Dublin ·
On September 9, 2026, at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, Apple did what it does best: it waited for everyone else to bleed first.
The Art of the Late Arrival
On September 9, 2026, at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, Apple did what it does best: it waited for everyone else to bleed first. New CEO John Ternus—who stepped into the role just a week prior—unveiled the iPhone Duo, a passport-shaped foldable with a 7.6-inch display and a price tag of $1,999. As reported by NPR, the device is a luxury pivot, costing $700 more than the entry-level iPhone 18 Pro.
Ternus, the former hardware chief, didn't mince words, dismissing existing foldables as "two phones awkwardly stuck together." It is a classic Apple gambit. They aren't inventing a new category; they are colonizing one. This is the exact mechanism of the Launch of the iPhone in 2007. Apple didn't invent the smartphone, but they entered a messy, mature market with a refined, high-priced version that redefined the industry standard. By waiting until the technology reached a level of maturity—a timing Ben Wood of CCS Insight notes Apple excels at—they have turned a technical experiment into a status symbol. Much like the Launch of the iPad in 2010, Apple has simply decided that the "tablet-in-your-pocket" form factor is now officially sanctioned for the masses.
The Samsung Paradox
The irony of the Duo is that its very existence depends on the competitor Ternus so casually mocked. As CNA reports, Apple uses foldable screens manufactured by Samsung Display. It is a delicious, cynical bit of leverage: Apple pays its rival to build the components, then uses those components to steal the rival's market share.
Samsung has spent eight generations—since 2019—doing the heavy lifting of engineering the foldable. They faced the early failures, the screen creases, and the skepticism. Now, Apple arrives to claim the crown. Samsung has responded with billboards in Seoul and London shouting "Welcome to Foldables," and taunts on X calling Apple's move "reheating our leftovers." But taunts don't stop the migration of the affluent. We saw this play out during the Launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note between 2010 and 2014; Samsung forced the world to accept "phablets," but Apple only moved to larger screens when the profit margins were guaranteed. The pattern is immutable: the periphery innovates, and the center harvests.
The Luxury of the Niche
The strongest argument against the Duo is one of economic reality. Philip Michaels has rightly pointed out that in an era of flat wages and rising costs, a $1,999 phone is a hard sell, especially when the real draw is "Apple Intelligence" and a Siri update that will likely trickle down to older models. To the pragmatist, the Duo is a niche product for a niche audience, a gadget for those who have more money than sense.
But this misses how power operates in Cupertino. Apple doesn't need the Duo to be a mass-market hit today; they need it to be the aspirational ceiling. By pricing it just $100 above the Galaxy Z Fold 8, they aren't competing on value—they are competing on prestige. They are leveraging a hardware base that brought in $209.6 billion in a single year to make AI an "integral part of the everyday experience," as Paolo Pescatore noted to RTÉ. This isn't about the 2% of global sales foldables currently represent; it's about ensuring that when the "far future" of the smartphone arrives, it arrives in an Apple-shaped box.
The result is inevitable. Samsung will see its share of the foldable niche erode as the IDC predicts Apple will capture 40% by next year. The Duo is not a leap of faith; it is a calculated land grab. Apple has once again proven that in the global tech economy, the winner isn't the one who gets there first, but the one who owns the rules of the game once they arrive.