Apple (AAPL) has unveiled its first foldable iPhone. The Duo is priced from $1,999 to $3,199. During the presentation, the stock fell about 1.1% but closed only 0.28% lower. By comparison, the S&P 500 lost about 0.5% and the Nasdaq 0.6%. So relative to the market, Apple's reaction was even slightly positive.
And there is no particular exception here. Over the last five iPhone presentations, AAPL has on average lost 0.72% on the day of the announcement and was 1.22% lower after five trading days. A sample of 24 launches since 2007 gives about -0.3% on the day of the presentation. By the next session, the average result changes to +0.5%, with gains in 15 out of 24 cases. Over a two-month horizon, the statistics are more cheerful: Bank of America counted 17 cases of AAPL rising 60 days after an iPhone presentation since 2007. The record is about +20% after the iPhone 11. But over 60 days, earnings reports, initial demand data and new macroeconomic statistics all come out. So turning this into a pure presentation effect is already difficult.
Foldable phones from other manufacturers show this even better. The first Samsung Galaxy Fold was presented in 2019 at a price of $1,980. In the next Korean session, Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) added just 0.11%. At the time, Citi expected about 1 million Folds per year versus 37 million Galaxy S10s. For the industry, the product was important, but for Samsung's finances, it was still too small.
What was far more interesting was how the market traded suppliers. Finetek (131760.KQ), a manufacturer of equipment for flexible displays, rose more than 20% for a second consecutive day after the Fold presentation. For Samsung, a million devices was a small volume, but for a narrow supplier, it was already a noticeable part of orders. The foldable smartphone market itself then grew from about 9 million devices in 2021 to 16 million in 2022, but Samsung's shares still depended far more on the memory and semiconductor cycle than on the Fold.
The first Google Pixel Fold in 2023 was accompanied by a rise in Alphabet (GOOGL) of more than 4%. But at the same Google I/O, the company also showed PaLM 2, generative search and a new AI strategy. It is impossible to attribute the entire move to the phone. Xiaomi's first MIX Fold also coincided with a bigger news item: a plan to invest $10 billion in electric vehicles.
With the Duo, the potential scale is already different. In 2025, the iPhone brought Apple $209.6 billion, slightly more than half of the company's total revenue. Counterpoint Research, a specialized analytical company for the smartphone market, expects up to 6 million foldable iPhones by the end of 2026. That could be enough for about 25% of the global foldable smartphone market almost immediately after Apple's entry into the category.
Therefore, for AAPL, what will be more interesting is not the reaction to the presentation, but the first months of sales. Pre-orders will begin on October 16, and sales on the 23rd. After that, it will become clearer how much the Duo actually adds in new sales and how much simply moves buyers from the Pro Max to a more expensive model.
