By Shahzaib Saqib — The Changer
CUPERTINO, California, Sept 8 — Apple’s first foldable iPhone is expected to command attention when new Chief Executive John Ternus takes the stage on Wednesday, potentially giving the company its biggest hardware redesign in years. Yet the device itself may not be the most consequential product being tested. Behind the folding screen lies a larger strategic question: whether Apple can use control of more than a billion devices to compensate for its slow start in generative artificial intelligence and turn hardware distribution into an AI advantage.
Analysts expect Apple to unveil a passport-style foldable iPhone priced above $2,500, alongside updates to its premium iPhone Pro and Pro Max models. Despite the price and expectations that its cameras and processors may not lead competitors on specifications, analysts believe Apple’s enormous installed base, brand power and ability to refine technologies pioneered elsewhere could quickly make it a major force in foldables.
The timing matters because Apple is entering a category competitors have spent years developing. Samsung, Huawei and Google have offered folding smartphones since 2019, while Huawei and Xiaomi launched new foldable flagships just days before Apple’s event. Apple’s familiar strategy is therefore visible again: arrive after competitors, learn from their engineering problems and attempt to turn a niche technology into a polished mainstream premium product.
The commercial expectations are substantial. IDC senior research director Nabila Popal told Reuters she expects Apple’s foldable to generate more than $45 billion in revenue by the end of 2027, even though folding devices still account for only a single-digit share of the overall smartphone market. Analysts expect Apple to emphasise improvements to two weaknesses that have dogged earlier foldables — hinge durability and the visible crease where the display bends.
But Apple’s real competitive deficit is increasingly software rather than industrial design.
The company has already announced a major Siri overhaul that relies partly on Google’s artificial-intelligence technology behind the scenes. Analysts cited by Reuters believe a successful rollout by the end of 2026 could allow Siri to narrow the gap with Google’s Gemini after years of delays left Apple looking unusually defensive in one of technology’s most important competitive races.
That makes Ternus’s first major product cycle unusually revealing.
Apple does not necessarily need to build the world’s largest standalone AI model to remain powerful in artificial intelligence. Its alternative advantage is distribution: hundreds of millions of customers already carry Apple hardware throughout their day, giving the company the opportunity to make AI part of the operating system, applications and devices people already use rather than requiring them to adopt a separate AI product.
The foldable iPhone could extend that strategy. A device that opens into a larger display potentially creates more room for AI-generated content, multimodal assistants, productivity tools and applications that move between phone and tablet-style interfaces. The question for Apple is whether software can make that new form factor meaningfully different rather than merely more expensive.
That is especially important at a price exceeding $2,500. Novelty may generate early demand among enthusiasts and affluent Apple customers, but sustaining a new premium category will require the company to demonstrate why a folding screen improves everyday computing. AI gives Apple one possible answer.
Ternus consequently inherits a very different challenge from the one that defined much of Tim Cook’s tenure. Apple’s supply chain, silicon, industrial design and ecosystem remain formidable competitive assets. What investors increasingly want to know is whether those strengths can become the delivery mechanism for an AI experience compelling enough to keep customers inside that ecosystem.
Regulation complicates that strategy. Analysts told Reuters the redesigned Siri may not initially launch in Europe because of regulatory disputes, while approval in China could potentially take until 2028. That risks creating something Apple has historically tried to minimise: major differences in the capabilities of the same premium device depending on where its owner lives.
China is particularly important because Apple is simultaneously fighting powerful domestic hardware competitors and confronting restrictions that could delay one of its most important new software experiences. Huawei and Xiaomi’s new foldables underline that pressure: Apple is not entering an empty market but challenging companies already competing aggressively for China’s premium consumers.
The foldable itself nevertheless gives Ternus something Apple has lacked for several iPhone generations — an immediately visible physical change. Nearly two decades after the original iPhone established the slab-shaped smartphone as the industry’s dominant form, unfolding an iPhone like a passport creates an obvious visual argument that something new has arrived.
Whether that translates into another durable Apple category is a different question.