Apple's $1,999 Folding iPhone Sells Out in Minutes, Will Arrive Roughly When You've Forgotten Ordering It
Preorders opened at 8am New York time. By 8:30, every model was quoting January 2027.
Commentary · Humour Real news, with jokes. The facts are sourced below; the snark is ours.
Apple’s first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, went up for preorder on Friday, 16 October, at 8am Eastern. It sold out its first batch so quickly that the main thing customers got was a lesson in patience.
According to Macworld’s live tracking, about half an hour after orders opened every US configuration was quoting a delivery date of 25 January 2027, in both colours and across all four storage sizes. Some buyers saw 29 January. Launch-day pickup stock in Apple Stores also ran out almost at once, Bloomberg reported, as cited by The Next Web. The phone officially goes on sale on 23 October. In theory.
The price of folding
The Duo starts at $1,999 for 256GB, Apple’s most expensive iPhone ever. Then it goes up: $2,199 for 512GB, $2,599 for 1TB and $3,199 for 2TB. That top model costs about as much as a decent used car, and the car comes with fewer worries about the hinge.
It has a 5.4-inch outer screen that opens into a 7.6-inch inner display, and Apple’s A20 Pro chip. It’s the first big launch under new CEO John Ternus, who has now discovered that the quickest way to shift a $2,000 phone is to not have many of them.
Demand, or just not much supply?
Before anyone calls this a historic sellout, it’s worth looking at the supply side. Yahoo Finance notes that Nikkei Asia reported early output running at only a “few hundred” units a day in September, as Apple insisted on quality. Analyst Jeff Pu cut his 2026 shipment estimate from 7 million to 6 million units and blamed the hinge, not a lack of buyers.
So a January ship date tells us people want the phone, and that factories can’t make it fast enough yet. Both things can be true. Apple hasn’t said how many units it had.
UK buyers did a little better. Macworld saw British ship dates in mid-December, so some people in Britain might fold their new phone before Christmas. People in the US will be folding the wrapping paper instead.
The Snark take
Apple has finally built a phone that bends, and the delivery date has bent with it. If you ordered one, the good news is that you have three months to save for the case. Investors seem relaxed: Apple shares rose 1.8% before the market opened. Apple reports results on 2 November, and that’s when we’ll find out whether the problem is demand or hinges.