John Ternus Debuts a $2,099 Foldable and Holds iPhone 18

John Ternus will unveil Apple’s first foldable iPhone on Wednesday, and TrendForce puts the starting price between $2,099 and $2,299. He took over as chief executive on September 1, eight days before the event at Apple Park.

The foldable shares that stage with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. The standard iPhone 18 is being held for spring 2027, so the first Ternus keynote is a high-end launch, not a full lineup.

Ternus Takes the Stage With a Phone He Already Built

Ternus is 51, a mechanical engineer from the University of Pennsylvania, and a 25-year Apple lifer. He joined the product design group in 2001, became a vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013, and joined the executive team in 2021. Apple’s own bio credits him with work on iPad and AirPods, and with later iPhone, Mac, and Watch generations, including last fall’s iPhone 17 Pro, Pro Max, and iPhone Air.

The foldable has sat in that hardware group for at least eight years. Until last week, Ternus ran the group. Edison Lee, an analyst at Jefferies, said Wednesday starts a three-to-five-year run of launches planned long before Ternus took the chief executive job, aimed at reviving consumer interest. He is presenting a cycle he already managed as a senior vice president.

He is the first engineer in the role since Steve Jobs. Cook built the supply chain and a services business that now exceeds $100 billion a year. Ternus built phones. The first public hour of his tenure is a product he already signed off.

THE HANDOVER TO WEDNESDAY

1. April 20, 2026: Apple’s board names Ternus as the next chief executive and Cook as executive chairman, with the title change set for September 1.
2. June 2026: Apple raises prices on Macs and iPads after a memory shortage Cook called a “hundred-year flood.”
3. September 1, 2026: Ternus takes the job and tells staff there is no team in the world he would rather build the future with.
4. September 9, 2026: He hosts the fall iPhone event at 10 a.m. PT in the Steve Jobs Theater.

Greg Joswiak, Apple’s marketing chief, floated the title in late August, calling it a Surprise and Shine event on September 9. The company has not said what will be on the slides. The hardware brief circulating ahead of the show points to the foldable, the two Pro iPhones, Watch updates, and a Siri rebuild that uses large language models.

September Is Now a Luxury Launch

Apple has spent years putting a cheap iPhone, a Pro, and a Pro Max on the same September stage. This fall breaks that habit. The three models due this month all sit at the top of the price list, and they all use the A20 Pro chip on TSMC’s 2-nanometer process.

The standard iPhone 18 eyed for 2027 would arrive with the iPhone 18e and a second iPhone Air, according to the same research note. That leaves anyone who buys the regular phone looking at last year’s hardware through the holidays, or stepping up to a Pro they did not budget for.

FALL 2026 VERSUS SPRING 2027

• This September: iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the first foldable iPhone, internally discussed as iPhone Ultra.
• Also on the fall docket: Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, plus a fuller Siri that is meant to work across apps such as Messages and Calendar.
• Held until 2027: iPhone 18, iPhone 18e, and the next iPhone Air, with a glass-heavy iPhone already being discussed for the product line’s 20th year.

People inside Apple have used Ultra as the working name for the folder. Apple has not confirmed it. Whatever the badge says, the commercial point is the same. September is being reserved for the phones that can carry a higher average selling price while memory is scarce.

What a $2,099 Foldable Buys

Every recent brief describes a book-style phone, not a clamshell flip. Closed, it is about the size of a passport, with a cover screen around 5.5 inches. Open, the inner panel is about 7.8 inches, in a 4:3 shape closer to an iPad mini than to a tall video screen. TrendForce estimates a starting price of $2,099 to $2,299, with the highest storage models able to exceed $3,000.

That would be a new ceiling for an iPhone. The iPhone 17 Pro Max still starts at $1,199. Nabila Popal, senior research director at IDC, expects Apple to deliver more than 10 million foldable shipments in the first year even at that price, and to take 40 percent of foldable shipments in 2027.

THREE PHONES, THREE PRICE FLOORS

Early supply is expected to be tight, which is the usual first-year pattern for a new hinge. A scarce, expensive phone can still move average selling prices even if it does not move like a Pro Max. That is the bet Ternus is being asked to stand in front of.

Samsung Already Sold the Wide Fold This Summer

Samsung shipped its first foldable in 2019. The Galaxy Z Fold 8, the wide 4:3 book it put on sale in August, starts at $1,899 in the United States for 256GB, then $2,099 for 512GB and $2,499 for 1TB. The 256GB Apple folder, if TrendForce is right, lands $200 above that first Samsung price, on a first-generation hinge, with fewer rear cameras than an iPhone Pro.

Counterpoint Research forecasts that Apple will take 25 percent of global foldable shipments in 2026, its first year in the category. Samsung’s share would fall from 40 percent in 2025 to 32 percent, with Huawei at 24 percent. Counterpoint also sees the whole foldable market growing 21 percent this year, helped by Apple’s arrival and by demand for wider book-style designs.

Apple’s entry is expected to lift overall consumer awareness and raise the benchmark for premium foldables, but Samsung still has a clear advantage in product maturity, channel reach, and foldable user experience.

Liz Lee, Associate Director, Counterpoint Research

A first-gen Apple folder at a higher list than Samsung’s eighth wide Fold is not a camera upgrade for Pro Max owners. It is a two-device replacement for people who already carry an iPhone and an iPad mini, and a trophy for people who buy the first week. Repair bills on foldables have always been ugly. Apple has not said what a broken inner panel will cost.

A Memory Crunch Sets the iPhone Price Floor

The folder’s price is not only a hinge tax. Memory prices have been in a sharp upcycle since the second half of 2025, as chipmakers steered wafers toward high-bandwidth memory for AI servers. Apple already raised Mac and iPad prices in June. iPhones were left alone then. They are not likely to be left alone on Wednesday.

TrendForce says Apple will not pass the full memory increase through to the sticker, and will lean harder on software and services to protect earnings. The firm still sees iPhone 18 series prices up 10 to 20 percent, with Apple eating part of the bill so that upgrades do not stall.

THE MEMORY BILL

• 256GB Pro memory: Costs in the third quarter of 2026 are expected to be nearly 400 percent higher than a year earlier, per TrendForce.
• Retail lift: New iPhone 18 models are projected to cost 10 to 20 percent more, with some of the hit absorbed.
• Foldable start: $2,099 to $2,299, with top storage past $3,000.
• Last year’s Pro: iPhone 17 Pro opened at $1,099; iPhone 17 Pro Max opened at $1,199.

Cook spent his reputation on supply deals that kept iPhone prices surprisingly still. Ternus inherits the opposite problem in week one. He is expected to lean on operations and finance to stretch scarce DRAM and NAND across a smaller fall lineup, which is one reason the regular iPhone can wait until spring.

The Hardware Trade-Offs Apple Is Asking Buyers to Accept

Apple’s pitch, if the briefs hold, is a crease that is harder to see, a hinge that has had years to learn from other makers’ failures, and iPad-like split view on a pocket screen. The costs of that thin book show up in the parts list.

WHAT THE FOLDABLE GIVES UP

• Cameras: TrendForce expects a dual rear setup, not the three-lens stack on a Pro, because a folded body leaves little room for a telephoto.
• Unlock: The same note points to a conventional capacitive fingerprint sensor, which would bring Touch ID back and leave Face ID off the first folder.
• Thickness and crease: Open, the phone is meant to be very thin; the remaining crease is described as reduced, not erased.
• Software: iOS has to treat two screens as a real layout, with split apps and developer APIs, on day one of a new form.

Those cuts are how you get a book that can sit in a pocket. They are also how a $2,099 phone can lose a camera fight with a $1,199 Pro Max. Ternus has spent years talking about durability and repair. A folding glass sandwich is the harshest version of that brief he has put on a slide.

Cook Stays in the Building

The succession plan effective September 1 was approved unanimously in April. Cook remains executive chairman and will still handle policymakers, which in practice means Washington and Beijing. Arthur Levinson, the longtime board chair, becomes lead independent director. Ternus joins the board.

John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.

Tim Cook, Executive Chairman, Apple newsroom, April 20, 2026

Under Cook, Apple’s market value went from about $350 billion to $4 trillion, and yearly revenue went from $108 billion in fiscal 2011 to more than $416 billion in fiscal 2025. The active installed base is more than 2.5 billion devices. That is the machine Ternus now runs, and it still depends on iPhone more than on any other product.

The in-tray around the folder is not small. Apple Intelligence has been uneven; the company has been rebuilding Siri with Google Gemini technology after internal models lagged, a choice that unsettled parts of the language-model group. Vision Pro work has been trimmed. Hardware people have left for OpenAI’s device team, which Apple has sued. App Store fees are under pressure in Europe. None of that gets solved by a hinge.

Ternus told employees at an all-hands that AI inside the company would help it “solve even harder problems.” Wednesday is a simpler test. He has to put a price on a phone that folds, explain why the regular iPhone can wait until 2027, and do it while Cook is still in the building. Apple has not confirmed the foldable’s name, its final price, or the day it goes on sale. Those answers are his, in the Steve Jobs Theater, at 10 a.m. PT.