New Telsyte research shows Australian smartphone buyers are still splashing out on premium devices, with Apple holding nearly half the market. The standout finding? Almost 50% of iPhone Pro owners say they’d buy an Apple foldable — and one in six would even pay more than $3,000 for it—potentially turning foldables mainstream.
With the foldable category in the eyes of the market, Samsung, Motorola, Oppo, Google, Honor and others are yet to cross mainstream with their sales, Telsyte pointing to an Apple Foldable being a likely strong catalyst for the category going forward.
One third of iPhone users say they would consider an Apple foldable, and if you look at just the “Pro” series Apple iPhone users that jumps to almost half.
As for price, we’re yet to see how that will land, but one in six of those Pro users are willing to pay over $3,000 [US$2,132] for the elusive yet to be announced iPhone Ultra (Fold).
“Despite the potential lofty prices, a new foldable iPhone could finally propel the category into the mainstream,” Telsyte principal analyst Foad Fadaghi says.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ll be right there vying with millions of others when pre-orders begin, because they are going to sell out in the first minute!
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I still don’t see the appeal of this. Every time Apple makes a bigger screen, they increase corner curve radii or something so that you can’t actually fit any more functional content on the screen than before. Why does Apple want to decrease the size differentiation between the iPhone and iPad?
Cannibalizing iPad sales isn’t going to be a problem given that the Ultra will cost close to 10x the base iPad. Plenty of people will still buy both and the majority of Apple customers won’t be able to afford the Ultra anyway. I share your concern about the screen space though, assuming it’s nearly identical to the Z Fold 8 ‘wide’ it’ll be a 10-15% smaller screen area than the iPad Mini which is already known for obnoxious levels of padding around the home screen. Furthermore we probably won’t get true iPad OS when unfolded, expect an in-between ‘lite’ version that’s basically iOS for side by side apps.
Cant wait…. But i doubt it will be easy to get one without a long wait!’
No, nearly half of iPhone Pro owners are not ready to snap up Apple’s foldable phone. These surveys are funny. Looks like it’s from Australia, and it’s more interest than it is a committed mindset.
The iPhone foldable will fail almost as bad as the Apple Vision Pro. I was the guy early on, before the AVP was launched, saying it would fail because nobody wants to wear ski goggles or experience a cheap imitation of reality.
Now onto foldables: nobody wants a foldable because it’s a worse tablet and a worse smartphone than non-folding counterparts. Only a small subset of the market buy them. After many generations of these devices, they still only have a small marketshare of smartphones.
For starters, it has a plastic screen and with a centre fold that gets progressively worse the more you use it. The optics of plastic are of course noticeably worse than glass. Second, its tablet screen size is limited. Third, when folded, it will have seams all over because it’s two slabs sandwiched against each other so not a seamless feeling device, and not as water resistant. Fourth, thermal issues because of problems with heat dissipation given the two slab sandwich design.
I could go on…
Hurrah lets hope John Ternus does not follow in Tim Cookes un=innovative footsteps leveraging these sales while failing to innovate and catch up on ten years of lack of innovation
Use the profit
1 to hire innovative people
2 let them innovate
3 accept you’re not a bean counter and not every project will succeed
4 accept in innovation – you are old if you don’t understand it in the Tim Cook ideology and because it not a film or a TV series it may be a very good innovative idea
let knowledge fly.
Don’t what ever you do tell the Chairman what your doing hell probably dissuade you or veto it.
Let’s do the math:
– 2025: 105m iPhone Pro and Max models sold (best estimate).
– Half of those are willing to buy a foldable iPhone (52.5m customers)
– 1 in 6 of those 52.5m is willing to pay up to $3,000 (8.75m customers).
HISTORY:
About 12% of iPhone owners said they were interested in buying Apple Vision Pro at $3,000.
Once reality of $3,499 pricing hit, only 1% were even interested and even fewer than that purchased…
We can poll and dream all we want, but reality is very simple: If the foldable iPhone comes in over $2k, it’s going to be another very poor seller and more find it’s quick-hit buyers and then drop off the face of the earth in sales.
Only MASSIVE carrier deals can save it, but even those promotions end or are greatly reduced a few months after launch.
I don’t think Apple has any way or will (based on recent product price hikes due to memory and chip costs) to think volume, think iPad, and go volume and affordability. Instead, I believe they will go with another Vision Pro moment and screw this up again.
Tim Cooks last outgoing screw up to cap it all off…
I’m guessing the iPhone Ultra starts at $2,199 (you can buy a MBP for this price!), and will have carrier deals for $499 or $699, etc…. I do not see ANY carrier offering a freebie with the Ultra.
If it has two models, starting at $1,799 and $1,999, then Apple is looking for more volume long-term success with this phone and might be able to carve out some form of market share with it.
Carriers NEVER offer the Pro Max iPhones in their deals – rarely. Rather the freebie for a short while is the iPhone Pro “on us” as T-Mobile likes to claim.
So we shall see…. Certainly, existing customer are not getting amazing deals with this foldable.
Bottom Line: I’m counting on Tim Cook to screw this all up.