Apple has long been rumored to be working on the iPhone Fold and a foldable iPad. A new report claims that the iPad project is “paused,” and I am convinced that it’s the right decision.
The folding device rumors have been plentiful in recent years, and the general belief was that something would be released in 2026 or thereabouts. Whether that would be a phone or some sort of tablet-laptop hybrid was unclear, depending on which analyst you listened to.
It’s important to remember that this latest report, courtesy of DigiTimes, doesn’t say that the foldable iPad has been canceled. Rather, it says that Apple has “decided to pause progress” on the project.
Of course, this is from DigiTimes. These are the guys who said that the Pro Display XDR was an iMac, so anything and everything they say needs to be taken with not just a grain of salt, but an entire salt lick.
If accurate, just how long that pause will last, we’ll have to wait and see. After all, a foldable screen iSomething has been rumored to be a next-year product for the last seven.
Who’s waiting for a foldable iPad, anyway?
If there was any potential at all for the foldable iPad to hamper Apple’s plans for a foldable iPhone, in design, engineering, shipping, or production, I think that Apple did the right thing by giving the iPhone priority.
Why that is comes down to expectations, demand, and the market around Apple in 2025. The lack of a foldable iPhone is… something for Apple, especially as other phone makers continue to iterate at lightning speed. Whether or not it’s a real issue depends very much on your iPhone use case.
The foldable phone market is spendy, and relatively niche. Most folding smartphones cost more than an iPhone 16 Pro Max, and that’s a giant pill to swallow for most Android folks. Any customer — especially high-end ones — lost to Android because they aren’t being catered to, is one too many.
Foldables are here to stay, and getting those customers back might take something very special indeed.
I’m still not sure how many people are clamoring for a foldable iPad that can turn into a MacBook of sorts, when traditional MacBooks continue to sell gangbusters.
Ultimately, following the launch of Apple Vision Pro, I’m not sure Apple wants another comparatively low-volume launch — compared to non-folding iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches, at least.
Apple is behind the competition
Apple might not have entered the foldable fray just yet, but others haven’t been waiting to take the lead. Big-name players like Samsung and Motorola have years of experience in foldable smarphones behind them, and their wares are starting to show it.
Even flaming data that you get from failures is data. Both Samsung and Motorola have that, in scores of creased screens, seized hinges, and famously, high-profile reviewers peeling off the screen film.
Samsung is, in fact, getting ready to announce refreshed foldable models. But Apple’s really being shown up by the likes of Oppo and Honor, and I think that’s a problem.
The Oppo Find N5 is an incredible foldable phone. It’s impossibly thin, super-fast, and looks great. The brand-new Honor V5 is even thinner, albeit by just 0.1mm.
Both of these phones have fancy hinges that are designed to deal with known foldable issues. Those issues? Prominent creases and dust ingress that can cause chaos, which I’ve alluded to before.
Both phones are rated as being dust and water resistant as a result of the new hinge, and both have almost invisible creases. Oh, and both have gorgeous 120Hz OLED foldable panels, too.
It has long been assumed that Apple is late to the foldable market because it didn’t want to deal with the issues that plagued these devices. But those issues have (mostly) been dealt with, and we may already have a look at what Apple is planning for the crucial hinge.
That leaves the obvious, uncomfortable, lingering question: If Oppo and Honor can do it, why can’t Apple?
Why it’s taken so long for Apple to get here, we don’t yet know. It may not want to yet, because we know it has the technology and the research. Maybe that’s a question that will be answered when the iPhone Fold is finally announced.
But probably not. Apple is monolithic in its silence about matters like this — until it decides in its interminable wisdom that it’s time not to be.
I hope I’m wowed and that the wait suddenly makes sense.
iPads are iPads, and MacBooks are MacBooks
With Apple’s iPhone Fold maybe desperately needed, and craved by a few high-rollers, what of the iPad Fold?
While there are Windows PC versions of something similar to the rumored iPad Fold, they are far from mainstream. I liken them to the Tablet PC of the late 1990s — they’re cool, but ultimately don’t answer a real need for enough people.
Apple’s iPad lineup is full of popular products, and the same goes for the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lineups. Mixing the two together seems an odd decision. Not least because we don’t know whether it would run iPadOS or macOS.
Ultimately, it comes down to a simple question of priorities and resources. One of Apple’s rumored foldable devices was always going to come first, the only question was which one it would be.
For me, there was only ever one option. The iPhone Fold should have been in Apple’s lineup years ago. I still don’t see where an iPad Fold fits into it.
Apple isn’t hurting for money. It can wait forever if it needs to, and folks that remember the iPod or iPhone taking off right out of the gate are remembering history wrong. It took a few years for both, and the iPad and Apple Watch even longer. We’re in the midst of that “what is this for” for Apple Vision Pro right now.
But lost sales are lost sales. War chest or not, shareholders expect everything to be done to make more of it.
With that in mind, Apple seems to have made the obvious decision. Concentrate on the product people are likely to buy while pausing the one they aren’t.
I can’t wait to see what a foldable iPhone has to offer. And who knows, maybe it’ll get me excited for a foldable iPad as well.
