MSX US Stock Daily Observation: First Foldable iPhone Launched! Duo with A20 Pro Enters the Ultra-High-End Market, Apple Builds an Ecosystem Blueprint Deeply Integrating Hardware Innovation and AI

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Apple has officially entered the foldable era. On September 9, new CEO John Ternus hosted the fall event for the first time, unveiling the first foldable iPhone Duo priced at $1,999, while the starting prices of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max were raised to $1,199 and $1,299, respectively. More noteworthy than the product form itself is that Apple is once again pushing up the price ceiling of the iPhone: against the backdrop of a highly mature global smartphone market where the iPhone still contributes nearly half of the company's revenue, the foldable offers a path to continue growing revenue not by substantially increasing shipment volumes, but by relying on ASP and a higher share of premium products.

Historically, Apple's launch day has not been a reliable stock price catalyst. Across major past iPhone launches, same-day performance has seen more declines than gains, but when extended to 60 trading days after launch, the proportion of gains rises markedly. The reason is not hard to understand: the event trades on expectation fulfillment, while what the market truly needs to verify over the following two quarters is new product sales, ASP, gross margin, and the upgrade cycle. Especially after Apple's latest quarter saw iPhone revenue grow more than 20% year-over-year to a record for the same period, whether the foldable this year can extend this round of hardware growth is the more important variable.

Data in a Minute

• After succeeding as Apple CEO, John Ternus hosted the annual iPhone event for the first time, with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max unveiled simultaneously, starting at $1,199 and $1,299 respectively, both starting from 256GB; pre-orders on September 12, launch on September 18;

• The first foldable iPhone is priced at $1,999, featuring a book-style fold design with an inner display of approximately 7.6 inches, making it Apple's highest-priced iPhone product to date;

• Across the past 16 major iPhone launch days, Apple's stock rose 5 times and fell 11 times, with an average return of about -0.7%; 60 trading days after launch, it rose 12 times, with an average return of about 4.2%;

• Historically, the best 60-day performance was the iPhone 11 cycle, up 21.51%; the weakest was the iPhone XR/XS cycle, down 21.68%;

• On this launch day, Apple's stock closed at about $313.55, down about 0.84%, still consistent with the historically weak pattern on new product launch days;

• In the previous quarter, iPhone revenue was $54.252 billion, up 22% year-over-year, a record for the June quarter; growth was mainly driven by Pro models, which accounted for about 49.6% of Apple's total revenue;

• IDC expects global smartphone shipments to decline 13.9% to 1.09 billion units in 2026, but the foldable category is still growing about 20%; the significance of the Duo lies more in Apple entering a still-growing ultra-premium niche than in changing the shipment trend of the entire smartphone market.

MSX View

To understand the iPhone Duo, one cannot look only at how many units it can sell, but also at what role it plays in Apple's business model.

Apple is still a company highly dependent on the iPhone. Nearly half of revenue in the latest quarter came from the iPhone, and the recovery in Greater China was also mainly driven by the iPhone. Over the past few years, Apple's core problem has never been user attrition, but rather that smartphones are becoming more durable and upgrade cycles are getting longer. In this situation, conventional upgrades in chips, imaging, and battery life can retain users but struggle to continuously create new reasons to upgrade. The significance of the foldable is that Apple has finally offered a visible change in form factor.

The $1,999 price shows that Apple is not in a hurry to make the Duo a mass-market product. The first-generation product is more like a probe into ultra-premium demand: using limited sales to validate the fold form, supply chain yield, and developer adaptation, while further pushing the iPhone price ceiling higher from the range occupied by the Pro Max. As long as the Duo attracts users who would otherwise buy a Pro Max, an iPad mini, or even a thin-and-light laptop, then even if it accounts for only a small portion of iPhone shipments, it has a chance to improve average selling price and product mix.

But a high price does not equal high profit. The foldable display, hinge, dual batteries, and added cooling structures all raise bill-of-materials and after-sales costs, and first-generation product yields are usually worse than those of mature models. Apple's latest hardware gross margin was 40.1%, significantly below the 75.6% for services. If the Duo merely sells at a high price without achieving sufficiently good yields and scale effects, its help to overall profit margin may not be as large as revenue performance suggests. Delivery beginning only in late October also means its financial contribution to the current quarter will be relatively limited.

In addition, as smartphones enter maturity, conventional upgrades in chips, cameras, and battery life are becoming increasingly difficult to drive users to upgrade early. The foldable offers a more intuitive reason to buy: it is still a phone when folded, and close to a small tablet when unfolded. Multitasking, Apple Pencil support, and half-fold usage also extend the iPhone clearly toward work, creativity, and large-screen content consumption for the first time. Apple is optimizing the all-scenario user experience through AI. If the new Siri can understand personal information and on-screen content, the Apple Watch can organize daily information, and AirPods can perform real-time translation, then AI will no longer be a standalone feature within a single device, but a unified entry point spanning phone, watch, and earbuds. Users switch between different devices, but the personal information, tasks, and services behind them can flow continuously, which is where Apple has an advantage over standalone AI applications.

From a business model perspective, the two paths also reinforce each other. The Duo and Pro series are responsible for raising hardware prices, while AI is responsible for increasing device usage frequency and further driving iCloud, App Store, AppleCare, and other subscription services. Apple's latest quarterly hardware gross margin was 40.1%, while services gross margin reached 75.6%. Therefore, for Apple, the ideal outcome is not just selling a more expensive Duo, but using the new form to attract users to upgrade, then converting new users and usage time into long-term service revenue.

The longer-term value lies in the ecosystem. Apple already has more than 2.5 billion active devices, and selling a new iPhone connects to App Store, iCloud, payments, advertising, and subscription revenue. The Duo's large display, multitasking, and Apple Pencil support provide new use cases for work, gaming, content consumption, and generative AI. If developers are willing to redesign applications for this form factor, what the Duo brings is not just a hardware upgrade, but more service usage time and higher value per user.

So what is worth analyzing next is the wait time for first deliveries, channel reorders, whether the Pro Max is significantly cannibalized, and the incremental service revenue brought by Duo users. Selling at a high price is only the first step. Whether a high-end niche device can be turned into a new ecosystem entry point is what John Ternus needs to prove to the market after taking office.

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Risk Disclaimer: Macroeconomic conditions and the US stock market are highly volatile. The content of this article is provided solely for academic and research observation reference by the Maitong Research Institute and does not constitute any investment advice.