Production of the long-awaited iPhone with a folding screen begins in a few months, according to a trusted analyst. But Apple supposedly plans to make only a few million of them, indicating the company expects this to be a niche product.
Previous reports indicate the price for the folding iPhone could be around $2,000 — about what similar Androids with foldable screens cost. High cost keeps this entire class of handsets out of the hands of average users, and so far it doesn’t seem like Apple has a solution.
Expect a small supply of the folding iPhone in 2026
The iPhone started with a 3.5-inch display, and then grew substantially over the years. But there’s a snag: the 6.9-inch screen in the iPhone 16 Pro Max is about as large as a display can be without the handset becoming cumbersome. The obvious next step is a foldable screen panel so the smartphone can keep up with customer demand for ever larger displays.
And, after years of prep work, a foldable iPhone is allegedly coming soon.
“Assembly supplier Foxconn is expected to officially kick off the [folding iPhone] project in late 3Q25 or early 4Q25,” Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with TF International Securities, said Wednesday.
But Apple is apparently playing cautious to not make too many. According to previous leaks, Samsung will be the sole supplier of flexible OLED panels for the device, and “Samsung Display (SDC) plans to build annual production capacity for 7-8 million foldable panels to supply the 2026 foldable iPhone,” according to Kuo’s note on Wednesday. Plus, the analyst suggests Apple might not need all of that capacity.
Given that Apple shipped about 232 million iPhone units in 2024, the foldable model will apparently be a drop in the bucket. But if so, Apple won‘t be an outlier. The entire world market for foldable handsets reportedly only hit 15.9 million units in 2024, compared to a total of 1.2 billion smartphones of all kinds shipped in the same time period.
Staying a niche product
The slow pace of releasing new cutting-edge foldable models will allegedly continue for years.
“Recent market rumors suggest Apple has placed an order for 15–20 million foldable iPhones,” Kuo also said on Wednesday. “Based on checks across multiple components, this volume likely reflects cumulative demand over the product’s 2–3 year lifecycle, rather than 2026 alone. This indicates that Apple’s foldable iPhone, expected to enter mass production in 2H26, may ship several million units annually in both 2027 and 2028, possibly due to its premium pricing.”
As noted, much of what’s keeping foldables a niche product is cost. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 costs $1,900, while the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is $1,800. Apple’s rival products could come in above those prices so only a few consumers can afford them.
Not the iPhone 18 Pro Max
If Kuo’s report is accurate, then it seems very unlikely Apple intends to have the folding iPhone into the premium “Pro Max” model in 2026. Its top-tier version is one of its best selling, and replacing it with a foldable handset the company only expects to sell a few million of would be a serious financial mistake.
Given how little demand there is for Android foldables, and the low number Apple supposedly ordered, the folding iPhone could be a new premium addition to the lineup, not one that takes the place of any current model.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
