Foldable phones only account for about 2 percent of global smartphone shipments today, and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman believes the iPhone Duo is the product that changes that. In his September 13 Power On newsletter, he predicted that foldables will make up the majority of new phone sales within a decade.
Gurman's case rests on what the original iPhone did
This is Gurman's read of the market rather than anything sourced from inside Apple, and he frames the Duo as doing for foldables what the 2007 iPhone did for smartphones.
Just before the iPhone arrived, smartphones were only about 6 percent of global mobile phone shipments. Six years after launch they were the majority of phones sold worldwide, and today they account for roughly 85 percent of handsets sold globally, which is the curve he expects foldables to start climbing now that Apple is in the category.
When do you see yourself buying a foldable?
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The price tag is what slows the whole thing down
Gurman is upfront that this shift will take longer than the smartphone one, and the reason is simple. At $1,999 and up, the Duo costs more than two standard iPhones combined, and Apple is charging more in some overseas markets to keep the US starting price below $2,000.
That is a category problem more than an Apple one. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the Pixel 11 Pro Fold both start at $1,899 and the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra opens at $2,099.99, so the Duo arrives right in the middle of a price band that has barely shifted across seven years of Android foldables.
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Samsung's wider Fold 8, the model built as its answer to the Duo, sits alongside it on price as well, so nobody in this category is competing on cost at the moment. Whichever one you buy, you are paying well past flagship money for the folding screen, and that is the wall Gurman's decade has to get through.
He does expect that to ease, of course, with the Apple Upgrade leasing program going international and Apple putting the monthly rate in its marketing instead of the full price.
Android's foldables sit in the same price band as the Duo. | Image by Samsung
Still, I think Gurman is directionally right, since those models describe the market as it exists today and his whole argument is that the Duo resets it.
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Johanna Romero is a Senior News Writer at PhoneArena, covering mobile technology news across Android, iOS, wearables, and the Google ecosystem she knows best. Drawing on 15 years in IT and tech support from 2007 to 2022, she brings a user-friendly eye for the practical features and lesser-known tricks readers care about. Google named her an official #TeamPixel member in 2022, and she also reviews the latest devices on her YouTube channel, JoJo the Techie.
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