Apple’s iPhone 16 series packs a host of new features from the improved cameras and deep integration with Apple Intelligence to updated processors. But the long-rumored foldable iPhone Flip is still nowhere to be seen. Most Android phone makers, including Samsung, Google, Motorola, OnePlus, Xiaomi and Honor, have been selling folding devices for years now, and it’s beginning to feel like Apple is late to the party. That might be a problem.
Apple dominates in the premium phone category, but foldables — which fit into the premium space in terms of price — are already nipping at its heels, with Motorola telling CNET that 20% of customers buying its Razr foldable jumped ship from Apple. Meanwhile, Samsung is in the sixth generation of its Flip and Fold series. As CNET’s Lisa Eadicicco found out during a visit to Seoul, “foldables are everywhere” in Samsung’s home country of South Korea.
Would Apple go with a smaller format like the Galaxy Z Flip series?
With almost all the major Android phone manufacturers getting in on the foldable game, Apple runs the risk not just of losing out on potential customers but also of allowing a rival like Samsung to become the go-to name for the category, which could make it harder for Apple to have an impact if it eventually launches its own folding product. Furthermore, customers who’ve become early adopters of a foldable, attracted by the fancy bending tech, may be too entrenched in the Android ecosystem by the time Apple’s phone arrives to want to switch to iOS.
Apple is unlikely to be worried. It’s estimated that around 20 million foldables from all manufacturers were sold worldwide in 2023, while Apple reportedly sold 26.5 million iPhone 14 Pro Max handsets in the first half of that year alone. Clearly, Apple feels it has yet to miss the boat.
Google’s Pixel Fold is a decent phone, but it doesn’t drive the category forward in any meaningful way.
That innovation won’t just come from the product design. Apple works closely with its third-party software developers, and it’s that input that would help a folding iPhone become genuinely useful. My biggest complaint around foldables right now is that while the hardware is decent, the devices are essentially just running standard versions of Android with a handful of UI tweaks thrown in. They’re regular phones that just happen to bend.
Few Android developers are embracing the folding format, and it’s not difficult to see why; the users aren’t there in sufficient numbers yet to justify the time and expense to adapt their software across a variety of screen sizes. The multiple folding formats already available mean Android foldables face the same fragmentation issue that has plagued the platform since the beginning. Android-based foldables are simply a more difficult platform for developers to build for than regular phones. Apple would be able to change that, as it proved with the iPhone and iPad.
