Apple says ‘Fold’ and competitors ask ‘how wide?’
Apple is expected to unveil its first foldable iPhone this week, seven years after Samsung launched the original Galaxy Fold. The Verge argues that, despite arriving late, Apple's influence on the industry remains immense: rivals including Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi have already released passport-shaped foldables in recent months, a form factor widely believed to mirror Apple's long-rumoured design, suggesting competitors moved pre-emptively to match an iPhone that had not yet even been officially teased.
The piece notes Apple has reportedly worked on a foldable iPhone since 2017, with the shorter, wider shape first leaked in February 2025, giving rivals with slow-moving supply chains, including Samsung, which is said to supply the foldable display, time to anticipate and copy the design. The article draws parallels with the iPhone Air prompting slim rivals such as Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge, and the MacBook Neo inspiring cheaper imitators from Lenovo, Dell and Acer, arguing that most Android manufacturers had otherwise settled into Samsung's established Fold and Flip formats until Apple's anticipated entry disrupted the market.
- Apple set to launch its first foldable iPhone this week
- Rivals like Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi pre-empted its passport-shaped design
- Highlights Apple's outsized influence on rivals despite late foldable entry
New here? Start with this
Apple is expected to launch a folding iPhone this week, entering a market that Samsung pioneered with its first Galaxy Fold phone seven years ago. Since then, other phone makers including Huawei and Xiaomi have brought out their own folding models, so Apple is a relatively late arrival to a device type that already exists.
What has drawn attention is the shape Apple is expected to use, a design that is shorter and wider than most existing folding phones, sometimes compared to the size of a passport when folded. Reports suggest details of this design leaked well before any official announcement, and several rival manufacturers have since released phones with a similar shape, raising questions about whether they were responding to Apple's plans in advance.
This matters because Apple has a track record of reshaping product categories even when it is not first to market, thanks to its scale and influence over the wider phone industry, including suppliers such as Samsung, which is reported to make foldable screens used in various brands' devices. Observers see this as part of a broader pattern in which Apple's product choices, once known or leaked, can prompt competitors to adjust their own designs in response.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Those who credit Apple with reshaping the foldable market point to a consistent pattern of behaviour among manufacturers with long lead times: Samsung, which reportedly supplies Apple's foldable display, would have visibility into Apple's specifications well before launch, and rivals have strong commercial incentive to pre-empt an anticipated iPhone rather than be caught flat-footed by it. This view is reinforced by precedent, as the iPhone Air and MacBook Neo both appear to have prompted competitors to release similar slim designs shortly before or after Apple's own unveiling, suggesting Apple's product roadmap, even when unofficial, functions as a genuine industry compass that shapes design decisions well beyond its own hardware.
The case against
Sceptics of this framing would note that Samsung launched the first mainstream foldable phone in 2019, a full seven years before Apple's entry, and has iterated through several form factors since, making it questionable to characterise a passport-shaped design as an imitation of Apple rather than the natural evolution of Samsung's own long-running research. They would argue that convergent design trends in a mature product category, where engineering constraints such as battery size, hinge durability and screen ratios narrow the field of workable shapes, can easily be mistaken for copying, and that crediting Apple as the trendsetter risks understating the years of iterative work by Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi that arguably made a credible Apple foldable possible in the first place.
Americas Art Business Companies Culture Gadgets Technology World