Fold the phone: Apple's new CEO unveils a foldable iPhone

Apple CEO John Ternus holds the iPhone Duo during Apple's "Surprise and Shine" event at the company's corporate headquarters, Apple Park, on September 9, 2026 in Cupertino, California. The event featured Apple product announcements and was Apple CEO John Ternus's first keynote address in his new role. Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images North America hide caption

A new era unfolded at Apple on Wednesday with its new CEO unveiling an iPhone the size of a passport that, well, folds.

The device, called iPhone Duo, represents the most radical physical change to the iconic iPhone since Apple introduced the minimalist glass slab to the world nearly 20 years ago, kicking off the smartphone era.

Apple's folding iPhone Duo can be opened and closed like a passport. Apple hide caption

The Duo, likely in development for years, was no doubt timed to launch the tenure of CEO John Ternus with a statement about hardware and product design. Ternus took over from Tim Cook at the start of the month.

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While Cook was praised for his business acumen — Apple's market cap grew nearly 13-fold during his decade and a half at the helm — critics say Apple's gadgets haven't had the same "wow factor" that they did under the late visionary leader Steve Jobs, who introduced the first iPod, iPad and iPhone.

Analysts say Ternus, a mechanical engineer by training, may bring some of that back, having spent the bulk of his career at Apple on the product side.

And nearly an hour into a livestream introducing updates to existing product lines, like AirPods, Ternus echoed a trademark line that Jobs used before big announcements in product keynotes, saying, "But actually, there is one more thing," before announcing the foldable iPhone.

"iPhone Duo brings an entirely new design while preserving everything you love and expect from iPhone. It gives you the largest display ever on an iPhone while still fitting easily in your pocket. It reflects extraordinarily complex engineering, yet feels effortless to use, and it makes new experiences possible," he said.

Folding smartphones are not exactly a new concept. Apple competitors Samsung and Huawei have had products on the market since 2019, although early models were plagued with durability problems .

"One of the challenges is, it's a weird kind of product category," said Jason Snell, who writes about Apple at Six Colors . He said foldable phone sales make up around 2% of all smartphone sales worldwide.

"The idea that you open it up and it's almost like an iPad is a pretty cool idea. Whether that will appeal to a broad number of people — it's unclear," he said. "Folding phones are a solid category, but they're not a huge category. I think Apple will do a lot to popularize it, but even so, I think it's a niche product, and if it's the future of the smartphone, it's probably the far future."

Being a market follower with more robust and crisply designed products has been part of Apple's secret sauce for decades. The first iPhone hit the market more than two decades after the first cellular phones were introduced.

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The iPhone Duo opens like a book, with a 5.4-inch outer screen when folded, and a 7.6-inch internal screen when unfolded. It will start at $1,999 — $700 more than the entry-level iPhone 18 Pro, which the company also announced on Wednesday. It will be available starting October 23.

The product launches on Wednesday were accompanied by a pledge to make public a beta version of Apple's latest operating system — iOS 27 — in October. It will include a long-awaited, AI-enabled version of the digital personal assistant Siri that will have access to users' contacts, calendar, messages, emails and apps. The company says the update will help make iPhones "intelligent personal hubs."

Apple has come in for criticism for taking what many analysts have seen as a slow approach to artificial intelligence as it has shaken up the tech landscape. But Snell says the idea of "intelligent personal hubs" is a bet on "on device" AI, rather than chatbot-style large language models requiring access to the cloud and data centers.

"If you're a phone maker, you want to lean into that," he said. "In the long run, is it going to be necessary to have that level of power or are chips on our phones going to be powerful enough?"

Dipanjan Chatterjee, a vice president and principal analyst at the tech research and advisory firm Forrester, said Apple is betting that Siri "can become an invisible intelligence layer connecting context, personalization, and privacy across the ecosystem. Apple has spent years promising a smarter Siri. Now the bill has come due."

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But there are risks. Philip Michaels, a freelance tech writer who follows Apple, said the biggest one is the market, which is under pressure from tough macroeconomic conditions and rising prices of components, particularly memory chips .

"Basically, the challenge for Apple is going to be the same challenge for a lot of companies," he said. "Prices are rising, wages are flat, things cost more. Are people going to be convinced to buy a new phone, particularly when the main driver appears to be software features that are going to be available on current phones?"

Cook is staying on as executive chair of the company's board of directors. Analysts expect him to remain active in Apple's political affairs — particularly when it comes to relations with China, where he expanded Apple's manufacturing footprint, and the Trump White House.

"I'm not sure Ternus has those skills and certainly doesn't have that experience," said David Pogue, a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning and author of the book Apple: The First 50 Years .

Note: Apple is a financial supporter of NPR.

Editor's note: This story was updated to add quotes from tech industry analysts. Sept. 9, 2026

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