There are differences between the Vision Pro and an iPhone that people continue to enjoy completely avoiding.
The iPhone Fold:
Has the iPhone brand
Will be sold in all Apple stores, carrier stores, and third-party retailers such as Amazon, Target, Best Buy, ETC.
Will have all of the trade-in offers, installment plans, carrier contracts, subsidies, and so on, that every other mobile phone that Apple sells currently has. It’s likely that the vast majority of customers will never actually see the retail price of this phone, and certainly will never pay that out of pocket all at once.
The Vision Pro:
Is a brand new product category for Apple, not an iPhone.
is literally only available in Apple stores, in limited countries.
requires someone to cough up $3700 all at once, or on a credit card.
Has absolutely no traded offers, carrier subsidies, installment plans, or any of the other mechanisms built into a mobile phone purchase.
Does not have an established market, massive application ecosystem, and 20 years of history behind it.
Is a massive blank for most customers, meanwhile, most customers know exactly what they will be using a mobile phone for.
Is a bulky headset that even fans agree can only be used for short bursts throughout the day, if that.
Requires an extremely complicated set up process involving an iPhone with face ID, and matching several accessories to the device that will fit your face. An iPhone does not have these barriers.
In short, the things are not comparable at all. It’s like comparing AirPods to a Studio Display XDR.
It’s also not really comparable to the iPhone mini, the mini was not beaten by cheaper options, the mini was beaten by bigger and more expensive options like the regular iPhone 12 and 13, and especially the Pro Max. It was a very easy choice for Apple to discontinue it, because it was literally the cheapest option. If there’s a $700 iPhone mini and people are still opting for the $1200 iPhone Pro Max, it’s pretty obvious what should be done.
The fold is coming from the opposite direction, even if it sells in lower numbers, it’s significantly more expensive, and more profitable, for Apple. Put another way, if Apple sells 10 million iPhone minis at around a 50% profit margin, that’s $3.5 Billion in profit.
Meanwhile, at $2000, with a 50% profit margin, 10 million iPhone folds is 10 Billion in profit.
For comparison, that’s almost double what the iPad, not just one iPad but the entire iPad line, brought in last quarter. It’s a significantly larger amount of money for Apple.
And that’s just for 2026. In a couple years, if Apple’s easily selling 20 million or 30 million foldable iPhones, the revenue they would be bringing in is similar to what they make every year on the Mac.
This same logic is applied to the iPhone Air as well, the iPhone Air is not losing to the cheaper options, it lost to the 17 Pro Max. A significantly more expensive option. Again, it’s the opposite with the fold. The fold is a more expensive option, the fold brings in more profit for Apple per unit, the fold helps increase the ASP for iPhones.
To be considered a failure that should be dropped for Apple, this thing has to be not just a failure, but a massive, massive failure on a scale that absolutely no one could even predict. I’m talking less than 1 million units, type of failure.
Considering that the latest galaxy folds literally broke preorder records for Samsung and had almost 2 million preorders, not just purchases but just preorders, I think Apple’s folding iPhone will do just fine.
