Apple‘s first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, reached stores around the world on Friday carrying a price of roughly $2,000 and noticeably less of the spectacle that once accompanied a new iPhone launch. From Singapore and Shanghai to London and San Francisco, demand proved strong, but with sales rationed and pre-orders capped, the round-the-block queues and overnight camp-outs that defined earlier iPhone days were largely absent. The launch was, in effect, mostly confined to those who had already secured a handset online, a distribution strategy that shaped both the mood and the optics of the day.
The Duo enters a market that is no longer novel. Samsung Electronics and Huawei Technologies have sold premium foldable phones for years, refining the hardware and absorbing the early skepticism that greeted the category. Apple’s arrival is therefore less an invention than an interpretation, a test of whether the company can reinvent the small foldable mobile market the way the iPhone once redefined the smartphone itself. That is a high bar, and the pricing suggests Apple is positioning the Duo as a luxury object rather than a mass-market device. It is also an early challenge for Apple’s new chief executive John Ternus, the former hardware chief who unveiled the phone barely a week after taking charge in September.
Demand, by Apple’s own account, has been exceptional. Estimated delivery dates for the Duo slipped to late January within minutes of pre-orders opening a week earlier, as demand outpaced supply. The company described the response as “nothing short of extraordinary.” It capped pre-orders at two handsets per customer and limited walk-in sales, and in China, France, Hong Kong, India and Japan the device was available only to those who had ordered online. Those restrictions helped manage expectations and inventory, but they also muted the street-level energy that typically accompanies an Apple release.
In Sydney, where the first Apple store began selling the new passport-shaped phones on Friday, a queue formed outside before the doors opened at 8 a.m. local time. Among those waiting was Simon Krishnan, a 48-year-old engineer who paid A$3,899, roughly $2,734, for a 512GB Duo. “This is a bit of a luxury item for me, because it’s so expensive, but I just think, you know what? Life’s too short,” he said. That sentiment captures the peculiar appeal of a device that costs as much as a decent used car in some markets, and it also hints at the audience Apple is courting: buyers who are willing to pay a premium for novelty and craftsmanship rather than necessity.
Ternus spent part of the day playing greeter at a store in Austin, Texas, throwing open the doors and high-fiving customers as they streamed in, according to a video posted on X by CBS Austin. A known car enthusiast, his Austin visit coincided with this weekend’s Formula 1 US Grand Prix in the city, where Apple holds exclusive US broadcast and streaming rights to the racing series. The overlap was unlikely to be accidental. Apple has increasingly used sports rights and live events to extend its brand beyond hardware, and a CEO appearance timed to a major race weekend served both the launch and the broader marketing apparatus around it.
At Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York, marketing head Greg Joswiak opened the doors to a crowd of customers, social media posts showed, with some posts saying people had camped outside the store since as early as 4 a.m. local time. Those scenes offered a reminder that the appetite for a new Apple product remains genuine, even if the ritual of the launch has changed. The queues were smaller, the camp-outs shorter, and the sales more controlled, but the underlying enthusiasm was still visible for those who looked for it.
The competitive picture is worth weighing carefully. Samsung and Huawei have spent years educating consumers about foldables, absorbing the costs of early manufacturing defects and the skepticism that followed. Apple is arriving late, but late arrivals have served the company well before. The iPod was not the first MP3 player, and the iPhone was not the first smartphone. What Apple has historically done well is refine a category until it becomes intuitive, and the Duo’s design, with its passport-like proportions, suggests an attempt to solve the ergonomic problems that have limited foldables to a niche audience. IDC expects the Duo to become the market leader in foldables in 2027, a forecast that assumes Apple’s brand power and ecosystem can do what competitors have struggled to achieve.
Yet the launch also raises questions that a single day of sales cannot answer. A $2,000 phone arrives at a moment of consumer caution in many markets, and the rationing of supply may reflect manufacturing constraints as much as strategic scarcity. The muted fanfare may be a deliberate choice to manage expectations, or it may signal that the device has not yet captured the public imagination in the way Apple’s best products have. Ternus, barely a month into the job, now carries the weight of a product that is both a statement of intent and a commercial gamble. Whether the Duo becomes a template for a new generation of Apple devices or a costly experiment in a category that remains stubbornly niche will depend on factors that unfold over years, not weekends. For now, the queues were shorter, the price was higher, and the question of whether Apple can still remake a market remains genuinely open.
