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I love Apple’s flagship Cosmic Orange color iPhone 17 Pro – Even when I managed to Turn mine pink — but I was disappointed not to see the company’s long-rumored foldable iPhone Flip. Almost every major Android phone maker, Including SamsungGoogle, Motorola, OnePlus, Xiaomi Honor now has multiple generations in their foldable phone lineups, with the devices continuing to improve more and more with each revision. Oppo is now in its fifth year of foldable devices Latest search for N6 It is the result of those years of development. Apple hasn’t gotten to the first step yet, and it’s starting to feel like it’s too late for the party. This may be a problem.
Apple dominates the premium phone category, however Foldable — which fits into the premium space in terms of price — is already on its heels Motorola tells CNET That 20% of customers buying the foldable Razr jumped from Apple. Meanwhile, Samsung is in the seventh generation of the Flip and Fold series. As Lisa Edesiko discovered during a visit to Seoul, “Foldable devices are everywhere“In Samsung’s home country of South Korea.
Will Apple opt for a smaller format like the Galaxy Z Flip series?
With almost every major Android phone maker entering the foldable market, Apple risks losing potential customers. It also runs the risk of allowing a competitor like Samsung or Motorola to become the go-to name for foldable devices, which could make it harder for Apple to make an impact if it eventually launches its own device. Moreover, early adopters who are attracted to foldable technology may be so entrenched in the Android ecosystem by the time an Apple phone arrives that they want to switch to iOS.
Apple is unlikely to be concerned. It is estimated that around 20 million foldable devices will be sold from all manufacturers worldwide in 2023, while Apple reportedly sold 26.5 million iPhone 14 Pro Max phones in the first half of that year alone. In 2024, foldable sales were flat, and 2025 wasn’t much better, according to Analysts at CounterPoint ResearchAlthough Samsung has reported this Record numbers of pre-orders For the latest folding. Apple clearly feels it hasn’t missed the boat yet.
iPhone 15 Pro Max is a great phone. But what if it could bend?
Apple has always been successful in taking its time, monitoring the industry, and launching its own product when it’s ready. Apple didn’t invent phones, tablets, smartwatches, or computers, but it found ways to take existing products and make them more useful, more valuable in everyday life, and dare I say — more exciting. That’s why the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac lines dominate the market today.
For me, I need to see what Apple thinks about a foldable phone. I’ve written before about how Disappointed I fold. I’ve been a mobile reporter for over 14 years and the phones are becoming increasingly dull as they converge to become slight variations on the same rectangular panel.
Read more: The best flip phone of 2026
Foldable devices promised something newsomething innovative, something that briefly sparked some excitement in me, but after years passed, that excitement waned to the point of extinguishing. They’re good products, and while I like the novelty of the bendable screen, they don’t represent a revolution in how we interact with our phones. Not in the way the touch screen arrived when we were still pressing buttons to type texts.
I was hoping Google’s Pixel Fold would be too Phone to push the foldable phone forwardAnd while the latest Pixel 10 Pro Fold — Google’s second-generation foldable phone — offers some great updates, it still doesn’t offer any sort of… revolution. Instead, it feels like a “me too” move from Google. Ditto OnePlus unlocked. So all I have to do is look to Apple, a company with a proven track record of product revolutions, to create a new take on the genre that genuinely pushes forward in how we use our phones.
Google’s Pixel Fold is a decent phone, but it doesn’t push the category forward in any meaningful way.
This innovation will not just come from product design. Apple works closely with third-party software developers, and it’s this input that will help the foldable iPhone become truly useful. My biggest complaint about foldable devices at the moment is that while the hardware is good, the devices basically only run standard versions of Android with a few UI tweaks. They’re just regular phones that happen to bend.
Few Android developers are embracing the foldable format, and it’s not hard to see why; There aren’t enough users yet to justify the time and expense needed to adapt their software across a variety of screen sizes. The multiple foldable formats already available mean that Android foldable devices face the same fragmentation problem that has plagued the platform since the beginning. Android foldable devices are a more difficult platform for developers to build on than feature phones. Apple will be able to change that, as it has proven with the iPhone and iPad.
Apple didn’t invent tablet computers, but its iPad line revolutionized the category.
Given Apple’s close relationships with top developers — not to mention its massive developer team — I expect Apple’s foldable will eventually introduce innovations that make it more than just an iPhone that folds in half.
I really hope that happens. I want to look forward to launching the technology again. I want to feel excitement when I get a new tool in my hands and feel that wow moment when I do something transformative for the first time.
In short, I don’t want to be bored with technology anymore. Apple, it’s up to you.