entrants. It is looking increasingly likely that Apple will have to get on with the program and most analysts point at 2023 as the
type.
Apple could mainstream foldable phones
The inevitable iPhone Fold popularity will be all about the logo… and the software
When Apple releases a foldable phone, pundits will line up extolling the virtue of foldable phones, CNBC and Bloomberg analysts will start calculating the size of the market Apple is entering, and its stock price will go up, all the while we will have had quality foldables for a good 5 years by then.
It’s a familiar song and dance with Apple – it waits for a market to innovate itself, mature, diversify component suppliers enough to allow high margins, and swoops in with a surprise take or the software to back new usage scenarios. Apple gets away with selling midrange specs at high-end prices precisely because it has created an aura around its name in the manner what haute couture French or Italian fashion brands have done, but that’s just a part of it.
Even without hitching their wagon to a brand like Hermès, however, Apple products are priced way above the sum of their parts, yet it keeps pulling off record quarters. How does the company do it?
- Quality user-centric products and ecosystem synergy: Steve Jobs was not the first to put a computer in your pocket but he made it easy to use and Apple kept adding to the ecosystem of such ‘it just works’ products with focus on design, software, and performance, mostly with success so far.
- Emotional attachment: Steve Jobs made sure to sell people an entry to an exclusive world with cult-like secrecy around its inner workings. Heck, it took the iPad Pro 2021 specs for Apple to cite how much RAM it puts in its gear!
- It’s a self-fulfilling patriotic prophecy in the world’s most media-covered market, for better or worse, and half of the US users now carry iPhones, amplifying its message further.
- Brand clout: Apple is the most successful brand in the world’s most visible and impact-heavy market. If your country had a company like Apple, would you still buy iPhones instead?
People would flip over an iPhone Flip
What then, will be the other unique value proposition that Apple adds to foldables to justify what would inevitably be a price much higher than the Pro Max model at that time? Why, a polished foldable phone software that might be years in the making (nudge, wink, multitasking at long last), and the logo on the back, of course. That same logo may very well end up its chief added value, too.
Love it or leave it, an iPhone Flip will most likely light a fuse under the foldable phones market niche that could explode in market share afterwards. For a lot of people Apple will then become synonymous with foldable phones, even though Samsung would have been making them for five years at that point. We’ve seen this scenario play over and over, but maybe this time will be different. What do you think?
