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Apple's First Foldable Displays Nearing Mass Production

Advanced display panels destined for Apple's first foldable iPhone are reportedly nearing mass production.

Foldable iPhone 2023 Feature Iridescent 1
The Weibo leaker known as "Instant Digital" today said that Samsung Display is set to begin mass production of OLED panels for the first foldable iPhone in May 2026. Meanwhile, the user "Fixed Focus Digital" claims that the foldable iPhone's screen may be flatter than many of the existing foldable devices currently on sale, suggesting that Apple has largely solved the crease problem.

Previous reports have variously described the Samsung panel as as being "virtually crease free" and having "no crease at all." Bloomberg's Mark Gurman claims that the new display technology Apple is using reduces the crease without eliminating it entirely, but the result is "not perfect."

Rumors suggest that Apple's first foldable iPhone will feature a 7.8-inch crease-free inner display, a 5.5-inch cover display, ‌Touch ID‌, two rear cameras, the A20 chip, and the "C2" modem. It is expected to launch alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and ‌iPhone 18‌ Pro Max in the fall. Production will almost certainly ramp up as we approach that time of year.

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Top Rated Comments

sw1tcher Avatar
27 weeks ago

Apple's First Foldable Displays Nearing Mass Production
What a bad/confusing title. That suggests Apple's the one making the display when it's actually Samsung.

Title should be Displays for Apple's First Foldable iPhone Near Mass Production
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
27 weeks ago
I hope they do a much better job than Samsung's own devices. It looked nice on videos, but having seen their latest foldable in store the other day, they look so cheap when opened, it really looks and feels like a cheap piece of flexible plastic. It's not premium in any way, the screen itself doesn't even look nice compared to an iPhone screen, viewing angles are bad, etc.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
27 weeks ago
If they’re really planning to charge $3000, it better have literally zero crease. That price point commands perfection, period.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mikethebigo Avatar
27 weeks ago
I wonder if it will be similar tech to what is shown here by Dave 2D:
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
H.E. Pennypacker Avatar
27 weeks ago
I’ll be buying 7 of them for each day of the week. When you’re as wealthy as I am money is no object. I feel bad for all the peasants that won’t get to experience the brilliance of this masterpiece.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
surferfb Avatar
27 weeks ago

It will start at $1,999 for 256 GB. A 2 TB model will bring it closer to $3k.

As someone who intends to purchase one and give it a shot, I fully expect it to flop miserably, and barely crack 2% of iPhone sales.
A phone priced this high isn't expected to sell 30 million devices. Even if it's 2% of iPhone sales we're still talking billions in additional revenue.

2% of iPhone sales (slight less than 250 million phones last year) would come to roughly 5,000,000 iPhones. Even if every single fold sold was the $1999 model, that'd be $10B in revenue. Even if you assume everyone is coming from a Pro/Pro Max phone, we're talking about 2-3 billion in additional iPhone revenue.

In reality, the average sales price of iPhone is around $1000-1100 (and sure, most people buying this phone are probably already buying the Pro/Pro Max, but Apple is also going to sell a lot of the higher-capacity folds as well), so we're actually talking significantly more than $2-3 billion in additional revenue.

Long way of saying even at 2% of iPhone sales it's not going to "flop". It's going to be a niche phone; most people can't afford to spend $2k+ on a phone. Not every device Apple makes needs to sells tens of millions to be a successful product.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)