Would you buy a folding iPhone?
Apple has announced its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo. With a starting price tag of $1999, will it be a big hit?
Apple has officially entered the foldable phone market.
At its annual fall event on Wednesday, the Cupertino-based company announced the iPhone Duo, its first folding phone with a price tag starting at $1,999.
The main selling point of the device, which is roughly the size of a passport, is its ability to fold and open like a book. It features two displays — a 5.4-inch outer display and a 7.6-inch one that folds inward.
It’s the first new product to be released under Apple’s new CEO John Ternus, who took the helm of the company earlier this month.
The iPhone Duo is far from the first folding smartphone on the market. Samsung released its folding smartphone back in 2019.
And today, Android users have a range of folding and flipping phone options from the likes Google and Motorola, and a host of Asian phone manufacturers, including Oppo and Huawei.
Apple lauded the versatility and durability of the new device, which it says offers new “intuitive experiences.”
Folding smartphone enthusiasts say the devices are better for multitasking, playing games, and consuming media. But they remain niche, comprising about 2% of the global smartphone market, according to Counterpoint, a technology market research firm.
For many the devices are still too expensive and have too many compromises — mainly poor durability— to justify their purchase, according to a 2025 survey report from the technology news website CNET.
While Apple doesn’t often create new product categories, it tends to dominate once it enters them. That was apparent in 2001 with the release of the iPod years after the first MP3 player; the iPhone in 2007, which came out around the height of Blackberry’s success; and the Apple Watch in 2015, which hit the scene a few years after Samsung and LG first launched their own smart watches.
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However, one product that hasn’t been a smashing success for the company is the Apple Vision Pro, its augmented reality headset that was released in 2024. Sales of the $3,699 device have been lackluster, according to the market research firm IDC, and earlier this year, the company significantly reduced production of the device as a result.
So what might be the fate of the iPhone Duo?
Northeastern Global News spoke with Tucker Marion, a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation in the D’Amore School of Business, to learn more about the new folding iPhone and Apple’s product launch strategy.
Northeastern Global News spoke with Tucker Marion, a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation in the D’Amore School of Business, to learn more about the new folding iPhone and Apple’s product launch strategy.
What’s the main appeal of a folding phone?
Fundamentally, it doubles the screen size of your phone. That’s a better experience for engaging with social media, watching content, and it also opens up different avenues for interacting with the phone. .. It offers more customizability to the user interface than you have with a single screen. That is appealing to some consumers.
Folding smartphones have been around for years. Why has it taken Apple so long to make one?
In many ways Apple is a follower of the market place, particularly with smartphones. If you look at the pace of innovation against let’s say Samsung, Samsung generally outpaces Apple in terms of pure innovation and feature development. If you recall in 2007, the iPhone was actually fairly small. It was Samsung and others that increased the screen size. It took Apple many years to feel comfortable [to do that].
I think what you are seeing now is that the foldable phone market has matured a lot. Originally, there was some skepticism over durability of the screens and whether they would be of Apple quality. Now after several years, and that subset market has been confirmed and validated, Apple decided to get in and have a competitor in that marketspace.
Folding phones still make up a very small portion of the smartphone market? Do you think the iPhone Duo could make them a lot more popular?
Apple’s market share in the U.S. is very high and I do think once you are invested in an ecosystem like Apple’s the chances of you switching to Android or something else is very low. They are going after a user that may be intrigued by a folding phone but probably wouldn’t switch to a Samsung.
They like the Apple ecosystem. They are comfortable with the brand. The company is offering this option to these subset of users, and potentially it may gain users from outside the ecosystem.
How significant is it that the first product under the new CEO is a folding phone?
We’ll have to see how this launch goes and if there are any innovations on how they leverage two screens. Ultimately, a folding iPhone is an incremental product introduction. It’s not something that is completely out of this space. It’s not an AI dongle or something you put on your body. That would be a completely new type of product.
As he becomes more senior at the job, investors and others will be looking at Apple [and] asking the question — ‘Where is his iPhone at the moment’”?
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