Apple opened preorders for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max on Friday, September 12, keeping the spotlight on the company’s first foldable, the iPhone Duo, which goes up for preorder October 16 and hits stores October 23 starting at $1,999. The Duo debuted at Apple’s September 9 event, the first keynote hosted by new CEO John Ternus, who took over from Tim Cook on September 1.
The timing puts Apple in an unusual position: late to its own category. Foldable phones have existed since 2018, and the launch comes days after Huawei unveiled the Mate XT2, a trifold phone the Chinese company says runs on chips free from US supply restrictions. Two of the world’s largest phone makers are now selling their most ambitious hardware within weeks of each other, and both are betting big screens sell in a market that has been flat for years.
What Apple shipped
The iPhone Duo folds open like a book into one continuous screen that Apple says is 80 percent larger than the current iPhone Pro, and it is the thinnest iPhone ever when opened. The display works with Apple Pencil, previously an iPad-only accessory, and can be unlocked with an Apple Watch. It comes in Star White and Night Sky and can be used partially folded.
Alongside it, Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro at $1,199 and the Pro Max at $1,299, both with an improved camera, a new memory chip and longer battery life, and both equipped for Apple Intelligence. The Pro models open for preorder today and reach stores September 18. Apple also showed the Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4 and AirPods 5 at the event.
Ternus took a swipe at the existing market. “Others have created a foldable that feels like two phones awkwardly stuck together,” he said at the Cupertino event, promising the Duo would “redesign the experience of using a foldable phone.”
| Model | Price | Preorder | In stores |
|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone Duo | from $1,999 | Oct. 16 | Oct. 23 |
| iPhone 18 Pro | $1,199 | Sept. 12 | Sept. 18 |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | $1,299 | Sept. 12 | Sept. 18 |
| Huawei Mate XT2 | from 19,999 yuan | live now | Sept. 20 |
Huawei’s counterpunch
Huawei unveiled the Mate XT2 on September 7, two days before Apple’s event. The trifold uses an inward-folding design, opens into a 10.2-inch OLED display, weighs 299 grams and starts at 19,999 yuan. The Kirin 9050 Pro inside it delivers 46 percent more performance than the previous Kirin 9030 Pro, according to Huawei, and the company’s consumer chief Richard Yu highlighted the Linxi Core CPU, Maleoon GPU and Da Vinci NPU as all developed in-house. “We not only have strong CPUs and GPUs, we also have very strong NPU technologies that can support AI computing on the device,” Yu said at the launch.
The chip claim matters more than the phone. Nikkei reported the Mate XT2’s core silicon is free from US supply restrictions, a sign of China’s progress on domestic 7nm and 5nm production under export controls. The device also debuts a privacy screen that limits viewing angles, carries an IP58 and IP59 dust and water rating, and Huawei claims it is the lightest trifold on the market. The original Mate XT drew more than 4 million reservations in 2024, so demand at the high end of the Chinese market is proven.
Apple still dominates the foldable conversation in the West, where Huawei has no Google services and sells only in select markets. But IDC analysts expect Apple to sell more than 10 million foldables in its first year, and the Duo’s $1,999 starting price undercuts nothing, it simply sets the ceiling for the category.
The gamble
Foldables remain a small slice of smartphone sales, roughly 2 percent globally by most estimates, and every prior entrant has struggled with crease visibility, durability and weight. Samsung has dominated the category for years without turning it into a mass market. Apple’s bet is that its first attempt clears those bars well enough to make the category mainstream, the way the Apple Watch did for smartwatches.
There is also a leadership angle. The September 9 event was Ternus’s first as CEO, and leading with the most expensive iPhone in company history is a statement about where he wants Apple to go: fewer, pricier, more technically ambitious devices. The split release strategy supports that. The standard iPhone 18, 18e and Air 2 follow in spring 2027, separating the volume models from the halo products for the first time in the lineup’s history.
Supply is the usual spoiler. Early foldable iPhone production was reportedly limited to a few hundred units per day ahead of the launch, according to supply chain sources cited by Nikkei, which would mean constrained availability through the holidays. Apple has not commented on volumes, and its track record with first-generation categories is mixed: the Apple Watch sold well, the Vision Pro did not. Foldables add a wrinkle the Vision Pro never had, since the hinge and display are consumable wear items that fail visibly in a product people open and close a hundred times a day.
Preorder numbers for the Pro models will land within days. The real test arrives October 16, when buyers decide whether a $1,999 book-shaped iPhone is a computer they need or a novelty they can wait on. Huawei’s reservation numbers suggest demand exists at the high end in China. Whether it exists in Cupertino’s home market, at Cupertino’s prices, is the question October answers.