A $2,000 Foldable iPhone Can Take the Heat Off Tim Cook
A remarkably thin device from Samsung provides the blueprint for jump-starting sales of Apple’s most important product.
The way forward for Apple.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
Picture the life of Samsung hardware engineers: Day after day, they toil at the cutting edge, devising almost inconceivable ways to defy physics. Components are shrunken, twisted, bent against their will. And then their work is unveiled to the world: the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, an unfathomably thin folding smartphone. The company eagerly awaits the reaction of American smartphone buyers. “Meh,” they say.
Harsh? Maybe. But the sales won’t lie. At this point, I don’t know what it would take for Samsung Electronics Co. to engineer its way to a bigger slice of the US market, where Apple Inc. has a 56% share compared with Samsung’s 25%. The consumer lock-in of iOS and the Apple product range is just too great. People love their iPhones.