Other Why the iPhone Fold will Fail

[Daniel Alvarez Arribas]

On the "compromised" argument: It is easy to take it to an absurd extreme either way.

You could argue that laptops are a compromise between tablets and desktops, and they are selling like hotcakes.

The question is what the right kind of compromises is to result in an added value for the intended target audience.

Besides commuters and travellers, I can totally see retirees buying this in numbers as their forever phone with the benefit of including a high-end screen reader. Especially given that the book format is familiar. Kindles are nice, but realistically you'll still want to carry an extra phone. Now you don't have to.

With advancing age, many people get bad eyesight. This benefits enormously from a larger display, while still fitting into a pocket. Remember that eventually, we will all age into disability. For the senior demographic, the foldable may essentially be used like the visual equivalent to a hearing aid. And seniors are accustomed to orthopedic pricing.

Likewise, this has practical benefits for people wearing contact lenses, of which there are many. Imagine being able to fold out a larger display in bed, when already having removed the contact lenses for the day.

For the right user, it could be quite compelling, if they market and price it right.

 

[Pbwallstreet]

Ask yourself why Apple sees potential in entering that 2%? That 2% still represents 25+ million units annually, and growing. Hybrids and EVs were also once 2% of the market and that changed in short time. Why so strongly against progress when you're not forced to buy a foldable anything?

Face it, phone makers can't continue to enlarge existing slab designs. The iPhone Pro Max is already unwieldy and poorly balanced in the hand. Foldables allow a larger screen in a smaller and lighter footprint. If you're not the target demographic then slab options are still available. But it's nice to have a foldable in the lineup.

The iPhone Pro Max won't need to get any bigger from this point on because the foldable iPhone can take over. And in time, the foldable iPhone can add back the telephoto lens and maybe Apple can work FaceID back in too. At least it gives Apple something to work on since innovation has stagnated on slab iPhones.

You seem to assume that Apple is infallible. They aren’t. You can ask yourself why they decided to enter the AR/VR market with the AVP when it was a niche market.

I have the iPhone Pro 17 Max and don’t like the design. But adding another slab and hinge and another screen is obviously not the solution. The solution is core technology improvements like smaller and better batteries, much smaller and better cameras so they don’t create such a massive protrusion on the top of the device, etc.

None of this is really solved by a foldable because the fundamental technology and its limitations are the same.

 

[Nyx1]

The biggest problem is not device is the price $2k+ is crazy they late join foldable market and they want people pay $2k for this device even design fugly also another competitor have telephoto lens and this iPhone ultra even doesn't have face id it will be the same fate like iPhone air. If the put face id and telephoto lens it's fine if the thickness will be 5mm and the price $2k i think people will be accepted they missing face id that the crucial problem for this device.

 

[Pbwallstreet]

It literally is. It is literally a replacement for someone’s current phone.
Unless someone plans on carrying around two separate phones, it’s an iPhone, that happens to fold, that people will use instead of an iPhone, that does not fold.
The vision pro was not a replacement for anything, it couldn’t replace a Mac, it couldn’t replace an iPhone, and it wasn’t even close to the same thing as a tablet.

Love how you cut off my post and lose context. What I said is that it is two devices in one, in response to another person. It is being argued that it is a device that can replace a tablet and serve as 2 devices in one. And that is the problem: it does neither product better than its dedicated counter-parts.