Whatever Apple is cooking up in the kitchens inside of 1 Infinite Loop, it seems it’s very interested in making a foldable, but only on its own terms. The Cupertino, California company is reportedly working on a folding MacBook that lacks any semblance of that annoying crease found on most other foldables.
But if Apple is working on a folding laptop, we likely won’t hear from it until 2026, at the earliest. Noted Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TF International Securities wrote on his blog Thursday that Apple is working with LG to develop these 20.2-inch folding displays. More interesting still, Apple could be developing an M5 chip specifically for this new folding device.
As you might imagine, none of this is going to be cheap. Kuo claimed that Apple has some pretty strict specifications for both panels and hinges. According to Kuo’s blog post, each body could cost as much as $250 to manufacture, while the screens might be as high as $650.
If true, those numbers hint at a big asking price for Apple’s first foldable, potentially its most expensive consumer-facing product since the Vision Pro. Though considering that the Vision Pro didn’t ship too many units and the hype died rather early, Apple is thinking of shipping more than 1 million units of this foldable device, according to the analyst.
If Kuo is to be believed, Apple could be thinking of dropping its first foldable iPhone sometime in 2025 or 2026.
The US Patent Office granted the company patents on a foldable phone with a waterfall screen design and a foldable device with a display with “self-healing” properties. That patent mentioned phones, but it also foldable tablets and laptops as well.
Apple’s laptop sales lagged last year and only grew marginally at the start of this year. According to the Cupertino tech giant’s latest financial report, iPhone sales were also down overall. It makes some sense that Apple would move up the time tables on new, more innovative MacBooks.
The last MacBook Pro and MacBook Air were both quality machines with the latest M3 chip, but they were also very derivative of what we’ve had over the past few years. If Apple’s looking for its next big “iPhone moment,” a creaseless foldable might be its best bet.
Want more of Gizmodo’s consumer electronics picks? Check out our guides to the best laptops, best TVs, and best headphones. If you want to learn about the next big thing, see our guide to everything we know about the iPhone 16.
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