iPhone Duo Why the iPhone Fold will Fail [MERGED] [MEGA THREAD]

[jinnyman]

Regardless Duo will do much better than AVP. foldable is never meant to take over phone market. They are always a niche product. With that in mind, Apple will do just fine. And sadly 2,000 for a phone is no longer that crazy nowadays.

 

[cardfan]

Price absolutely matters because even with installments and carrier packages, its still a significant outlay every month for the average user. I expect it to be on backorder because its been suggested there are limited numbers being manufactured compared to other models.

So who in your opinion is this type of phone going to be popular with? The Samsung Fold makes up 2% of their sales, so what makes you think an iPhone version is suddenly going to make us pay almost double what we are used to?

I’m not sure you understand apples base. This isn’t Samsung. iPhone pro sold more than the cheaper iPhones. Apple knows how to market. The software is on another level. Reaction on X is eating this up.

Let’s just say I added some Apple stock today. The major worry to me however is if Apple can monetize ai. I couldn’t seeing paying for Siri or Apple Intelligence. But they nailed the Duo.

 

[cardfan]

As for the price, it’s not £1,999 for me. I’d trade in my 17PM and iPad mini. That would take it down to under £1,000.

Yep. After trade in especially throwing in the iPads you no longer need. You’d also expect a 1999 phone to have higher future trade in as well.

 

[ibRckr]

Are you saying that the Apple Vision Pro didn't have an Apple logo on it?

Exactly.
It did not.
Except for the battery pack which usually cannot be seen.

 

[Kaiserschmarrn]

Just wait till the wider public learns that the inner screen has a plastic top layer that you can damage with your fingernail.

I mean we people here know that, but I can tell you that for the large majority of people who barely know folding phones exist, that will come as a massive surprise and it will be an entire news cycle.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

Exactly.
It did not.
Except for the battery pack which usually cannot be seen.

Then I won't be buying one

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

I’m not sure you understand apples base. This isn’t Samsung. iPhone pro sold more than the cheaper iPhones. Apple knows how to market. The software is on another level. Reaction on X is eating this up.

Let’s just say I added some Apple stock today. The major worry to me however is if Apple can monetize ai. I couldn’t seeing paying for Siri or Apple Intelligence. But they nailed the Duo.

The Duo is also getting a lot of criticism for its price too, and I don't use X so have no idea what is on there. I guess evertone will be buying the duo then and i am wrong.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

If I’m paying £2k or upwards, I would want them to be able to develop a ceaseless screen.

A ceaseless screen would not fit in your pocket no matter how many times you folded it

 

[wanha]

Yes, I know people will jump on this and flame me. But this is a prediction and we will see if I am right or wrong over time.

I predicted the AVP would fail because it was obvious: it was worse at many things compared to other device types like smartphones and laptops and desktops. That it didn’t have much of a reason to exist.

Same too for the Fold. It is worse at several things compared to non-folding smartphones, laptops, desktops… and doesn’t have much of a reason to exist.

• Unfolded or folded, the Fold has seams since effectively 2 slabs are sandwiched onto each other and with a hinge. It will always therefore be design compromised compared to a non-folding smartphone.
• Because of the folding capability, and this is a big deal, it has to have a PLASTIC SCREEN. Plastic is noticeably inferior to glass from an optics standpoint, including reflections, and it will have a crease. And over time, we can see that the crease gets more pronounced with other Foldables. So on this, it will have a worse screen than non-folding products like an iPhone or MacBook or iPad.
• Fragility and processing power: it will be more fragile because they have to make each slab as thin as possible and there is a hinge, which is subject to breaking and failure. And the thermals suffer which can compromise performance.
• Very few use cases: the Fold turns into a tablet… but people buy and use non-folding smartphones precisely because of its form-factor: pocketable, one handed use, simple interfaces in software, etc. They aren’t asking for something to turn into a tablet, it doesn’t fit the use cases. And the stats support people not wanting Folds: Foldable smartphones after several years on the market still only have less than 5% of the total smartphone marketshare.

You don’t and won’t see people standing in line at a grocery store with one basket of food in one hand and an unfolded smartphone in the other hand. One handed device use is one of the main use cases of non-folding smartphones.

And for people who also like and want a tablet, it comes down to the problem of the fold being inferior across a set of things to a non-folding iPad.

I don’t see, therefore, how an iPhone Fold can be successful for Apple. Will some people buy it? Yes. How is failure defined? For Apple, it would be not leading in marketshare in the category and not capturing enough customers to make it a viable category to continue developing. Apple needs relatively large markets and scale, and that is not going to happen with the Fold is my prediction.

Go ahead and attack me, and for anyone wanting this device on day 1, that’s great. I don’t think foldables will not exist, but a device that doesn’t have much of a reason to exist is nothing more than a niche market device at best.

could you explain that when you say a product will "fail", what exactly do you mean by "fail"? Please be as specific as you can, because only then we can all talk about the same thing.

 

[AppleForeverandEver]

Looking closely at the cross section images, the screen does not fold completely. It folds with a “radius” and not with a sharp edge. Apple could pull this off.

 

[Varmann]

If I’m paying £2k or upwards, I would want them to be able to develop a ceaseless screen.

I guess you approach the "a lot upwards" range with that demand.
A screen that should has the quality close to that of a normal iphone, then be able to fold back and forth a lot, without ever developing a visible crease? That is pretty far out material science, that combine optical properties of glass with semisoft rubber foldablility. I do not think it is doable, regardless of budget, in many years.

 

[FeliApple]

I reckon it will sell, if Apple released it after eight gens of Samsung it will sell.

I’m just hoping it won’t replace “slabs”.

It’s a worse iPhone than an iPhone and a worse iPad than an iPad, especially 11 or 13-inch iPads. I’d even pick a Mini over it, of course.

The only use case I can think of is watching movies and the like when I don’t have my iPad and actually want to watch something.
0.000000000001% of the time.

I haven’t bought a foldable, but I’ve tried one and for me it doesn’t make any sense, it’s a solution in search of a problem.

Regardless, I think it will sell. Hopefully it sells poorly enough so that Apple does not convert the entire lineup to foldables. That would be bleak.