Apple’s foldable iPhone tipped for hot launch as iPhone 17 continues to lead sales

The research firm IDC predicts that Apple’s first foldable iPhone will sell more than 10 million units in its debut year. 

The phone will be priced at roughly $2,500, and is set to be launched in September into the worst smartphone market on record. 

How big will Apple’s foldable phone be? 

The International Data Corporation (IDC) has shared its prediction that Apple’s first foldable iPhone will sell more than 10 million foldable iPhones within the first year of its launch. IDC also predicts that the company will take roughly 40% of global foldable units. 

The phone is expected to have an average price above $2,550, about $400 above Samsung, whose Z Fold8 Ultra starts at $2,099 in the United States and has effectively owned the foldable category for seven years.

IDC now expects that smartphone shipments worldwide will fall by 16.7% in 2026, to just over 1 billion units, representing the worst yearly drop the industry has ever posted. The figure is also a sharp increase from the 13.9% decline IDC projected only three months earlier.

The cause of the decline in the smartphone market is because NAND and DRAM prices have climbed more than 300% year over year, and rather than absorb those manufacturing costs, phone makers are instead offering their products to buyers at much more expensive prices. 

IDC says that the average selling prices are set to rise by 27.6% in a single year to $581. The sub-$100 segment, 173 million phones in 2025, is being cut from vendor lineups.

Foldable phones are the only category that IDC has a positive forecast for, predicting that it will expand 12.6% this year to 22.9 million units, then 18% in 2027 to around 27 million. Without Apple’s entry, the segment would have shrunk at a double-digit rate instead.

Senior Research Director Nabila Popal expects Apple’s foldable phone to be “widely successful” despite the high price and also said the product is aimed at “a very elite set of consumers.” 

Apple’s iPhone 17 is still selling fast 

Counterpoint Research confirmed in the same week that the iPhone 17 was the best-selling smartphone globally in the second quarter of 2026, taking 6% of unit sales. Apple filled the next two spots as well with the 17 Pro Max and 17 Pro.

Apple’s unit sales grew 5% YoY even though the smartphone market experienced a general decline. Counterpoint Senior Analyst Karn Chauhan said the company’s gains can be traced back to India, Japan, the Middle East, and Africa, plus sales that nearly doubled in South Korea. 

What does Europe force phone companies to label their phones with? 

The EU has mandated every phone launched since June 2025 to have an energy label showing a repairability grade, a battery endurance figure, and a rating for surviving repeated drops.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max carries a class C repairability rating, class B for repeated free fall at 180 drops, and 1,000 battery charge cycles. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 already beats it on two of three of those categories, with the device having a class A rating on free fall and 2,000 cycles. It matches Apple’s class C on repairability.

EU Regulation 2023/1670 exempts only phones whose screens roll and unroll, not ones that fold on a hinge, so the foldable iPhone faces the same 800-cycle battery floor and seven-year spare-parts requirement.