Foldable smartphones are all the rage these days, and big brands like Samsung, for example, are going pretty hard on this archetype. The company is also working on foldable tablets. Apple, on the other hand, may be reversing the sequence, as analysts predicts that the company will release a foldable iPad before an equivalent iPhone.

CNBC cites analyst firm CCS Insight’s forecast that the iPhone maker will “likely launch an iPad with a folding screen in 2024”. This came as part of the firm’s annual predictions report. In an interview with the outlet, the analyst firm’s chief of research Ben Wood says that “it doesn’t make sense for Apple to make a foldable iPhone” and doing so would cannibalise existing models.

Should Apple follow the market trend and release a foldable iPhone, it will “likely need to cost around US$2500 (~RM11800)”. Put these two together, and it’s understandable why making a foldable phone first is a “super high risk”.

So far, Apple is the only major device maker to put foldable tablets in the pipeline ahead of foldable phones. But that’s not to say that the fruit company is willingly jumping onto the foldable bandwagon.  Wood adds that the company has “no option but to react” to the trend, but doing so with the iPad first will “breathe new life” into the tablet range. It will also help the company avoid massive backlash should it muck something up with a foldable iPhone.

For a company without a foldable phone, it makes a certain amount of sense. Apple can first work on a larger laterally folding device like Samsung, before moving on to vertically folding ones for its iPhones. That way, it can conduct its own experiments on a larger device first, and then scale down its learnings to a smaller device. Which sounds like the easier way to do things than the other way around.

(Source: CNBC)

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