Research firm IDC predicts that Apple’s first foldable iPhone will sell more than 10 million units in its debut year.

The phone is expected to be priced at roughly $2,500, and it is set to be launched in September into the worst smartphone market on record, according to the firm’s latest outlook.

How big will Apple’s foldable phone be?

The International Data Corporation (IDC) has shared its prediction that Apple’s first foldable iPhone will sell more than 10 million units within the first year of its launch. IDC also predicts that the company will take roughly 40% of global foldable shipments.

The device is expected to carry an average price above $2,550 — roughly $400 above Samsung, whose Z Fold8 Ultra starts at $2,099 in the United States and has effectively owned the foldable category for the past seven years.

IDC now expects worldwide smartphone shipments to fall by 16.7% in 2026 to just over 1 billion units, which would represent the worst yearly drop the industry has ever posted. The projection is also a sharp increase from the 13.9% decline IDC forecast only three months earlier.

The decline is being driven by memory: NAND and DRAM prices have climbed more than 300% year over year, and rather than absorb those manufacturing costs, phone makers are instead passing them on to buyers in the form of much higher prices.

IDC says average selling prices are set to rise by 27.6% in a single year, to $581. The sub-$100 segment — which accounted for 173 million phones in 2025 — is being cut from vendor lineups.

Foldable phones are the only category for which IDC holds a positive forecast. The firm predicts the segment will expand 12.6% this year to 22.9 million units, and then grow a further 18% in 2027 to around 27 million. Without Apple’s entry, the segment would instead have shrunk at a double-digit rate.

That makes Apple’s first foldable notable not just as a new product category for the company, but as a potential source of demand in a market IDC says is otherwise being squeezed by higher component costs and fewer low-end options. IDC Senior Research Director Nabila Popal expects Apple’s foldable phone to be “widely successful” despite the high price point, and said the product is aimed at “a very elite set of consumers.”

Apple’s iPhone 17 is still selling fast

Counterpoint Research, reporting in the same week, confirmed that the iPhone 17 was the best-selling smartphone globally in the second quarter of 2026, taking 6% of unit sales. Apple filled the next two spots as well, with the 17 Pro Max and the 17 Pro.

Apple’s unit sales grew 5% year over year even as the smartphone market experienced a general decline. Counterpoint Senior Analyst Karn Chauhan said the company’s gains can be traced back to India, Japan, the Middle East, and Africa, along with sales that nearly doubled in South Korea.

What does Europe force phone companies to label their phones with?

The EU has mandated that every phone launched since June 2025 carry an energy label showing a repairability grade, a battery endurance figure, and a rating for surviving repeated drops.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max carries a class C repairability rating, class B for repeated free fall at 180 drops, and 1,000 battery charge cycles. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 already beats it in two of those three categories, with a class A rating on free fall and 2,000 charge cycles, while matching Apple’s class C on repairability.

EU Regulation 2023/1670 exempts only phones whose screens roll and unroll — not devices that fold on a hinge — meaning the foldable iPhone faces the same 800-cycle battery floor and seven-year spare-parts requirement.