Apple’s 2,000 Dollar Foldable Meets a 94 Percent Inventory Build: The Numbers Before 9 September
Apple’s new chief executive John Ternus takes the stage on Wednesday 9 September with a foldable iPhone expected to cost more than 2,000 dollars, the first of what Bloomberg describes as the largest wave of device launches in the company’s history, per the roadmap carried by Asharq Business. The financial backdrop is unusual for a launch: the quarter to 27 June was what Tim Cook called Apple’s strongest June quarter ever, with revenue of 109.4 billion dollars, up 16.4 percent on our calculation, and yet the shares fell nearly 10 percent the next day after guidance fell short of expectations and Cook said the company could not secure enough components. The product map and the balance sheet tell the same story from 2 sides. Apple has never had more to sell, and rarely has it been harder to build.
The roadmap, and what it costs to enter it
The 9 September event, branded “Surprise and shine” on Apple’s own events page, is expected to bring the foldable iPhone, known internally as the iPhone Ultra, with an A20 Pro chip and Apple’s own C2 modem, alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 and AirPods 5, per the same roadmap, which groups a wider set of products under the event, late 2026 and early 2027 without dating each one: an updated Apple TV and HomePod mini, the first OLED iPad mini, an M6 iMac, the first touchscreen MacBook Pro with an OLED display, and Apple’s first smart home hub with a 7 inch display. The 2027 list adds a redesigned 20th anniversary iPhone with curved glass, a second generation foldable, camera-equipped AirPods, Apple’s first smart glasses without displays, and a split of the iPhone cycle that moves the base iPhone 18 to spring. Further out sit a larger foldable in 2028, a lighter Vision Pro in late 2028 or early 2029, a possible AI pendant, and a foldable iPad with a screen of about 20 inches that was shelved and could return by the end of the decade. Bloomberg’s reporting stresses that the schedule is flexible and that Apple declined to comment.
Competitors did not wait. On Monday Huawei and Xiaomi launched new foldables in China 2 days before Apple’s event, per CNBC Arabia. Huawei’s Mate XT2 folds twice to tablet size and is priced from 19,999 yuan, about 2,980 dollars, to 24,999 yuan, about 3,725 dollars, with sales from 12 September. Xiaomi’s 18 Fold runs from 10,999 yuan, about 1,640 dollars, to 14,999 yuan, about 2,235 dollars, and its chief executive Lei Jun said it is lighter than the iPhone Pro Max at 219 grams. Both companies’ presenters named memory chip costs as the pricing problem: Huawei executive Richard Yu called pricing “a real challenge” because memory costs have risen sharply, and Lei said memory had become extremely expensive, per the same report. Dollar figures are our conversion at 6.71 yuan per dollar, the rate quoted on 7 September. If the reported floor holds, Apple’s foldable would start above Xiaomi’s entry price and below Huawei’s, with its position against Xiaomi’s top configuration depending on the actual price, in a market where, per IDC data carried in the same report, Huawei led China’s smartphone market in the second quarter with a 22.6 percent share, Apple held 18.1 percent and Xiaomi 12.4 percent.
The financials behind the launch
Apple’s fiscal third quarter, reported on 30 July, gives the base the new products must build on. Revenue rose 16.4 percent to 109,417 million dollars, on our calculation from the consolidated statements, with iPhone revenue up 21.7 percent to 54,252 million dollars, Mac up 28.7 percent to 10,352 million, Services up 12.1 percent to 30,739 million and Wearables, Home and Accessories up 6.5 percent to 7,883 million; iPad was the only category to fall, down 5.9 percent to 6,191 million. Gross margin reached 50.1 percent, which Apple said included about 2 percentage points from tariff refunds, against 46.5 percent a year earlier. Operating income rose 26.6 percent to 35,695 million dollars and net income 27.1 percent to 29,789 million, with diluted earnings per share of 2.02 dollars, up 29 percent and including 0.11 dollars from the refunds, per the release.
2 lines in the statements matter most for the roadmap, on our reading. Research and development rose 32.3 percent to 11,729 million dollars, or 10.7 percent of revenue against 9.4 percent a year earlier, an increase Apple’s quarterly filing attributes primarily to higher infrastructure costs, including investment in artificial intelligence, and headcount. And inventories nearly doubled, to 11,092 million dollars at 27 June from 5,718 million at the September 2025 year end, a 94 percent rise on our calculation. The mix is the sharper signal: components rose to 7,645 million dollars from 2,124 million, while finished goods slipped to 3,447 million from 3,594 million, per the filing, so the whole of the increase sits in inputs rather than unsold devices. Cook said on his final earnings call as chief executive that Apple had cushioned memory costs by drawing on stockpiled inventory and that the buffer was fading, per Reuters’ report of 31 July. The filing does not say the components were bought for the September launch, and we do not assume it; it does say Apple is experiencing supply constraints and rising costs for advanced semiconductors, NAND storage and DRAM memory, expects those trends to intensify, and warns that price increases taken to offset them may reduce demand. Greater China revenue rose 22.4 percent to 18,816 million dollars, 17.2 percent of the total, so the market where Huawei and Xiaomi launched this week is also the region that grew fastest alongside Europe.
The market’s verdict so far
The shares closed Friday at 319.97 dollars, per CNBC’s quote, 7.1 percent below the 52 week high of 344.57 dollars on our calculation, valuing Apple at about 4.67 trillion dollars against about 5.55 trillion for Nvidia, which retook the title of the world’s most valuable company on 31 July after Apple’s forecast of 9 to 11 percent revenue growth for the current quarter fell short of the roughly 12 percent the market expected, per the same report. Cook became executive chairman on 1 September, having taken annual revenue from 108 billion dollars at the start of his tenure to 416 billion dollars in the last fiscal year and the market value from 350 billion dollars to more than 4.5 trillion, per a Reuters report of 1 September, which also carries Ternus’ new pay: a 3 million dollar salary and an annual equity award with a 55 million dollar target value from 2027, most of it tied to the stock. Apple’s board declared a quarterly dividend of 0.27 dollars a share, and the company spent 62,094 million dollars on share repurchases in the first 9 months of the fiscal year while generating 116,996 million dollars of operating cash flow, per the statements.
| Category, June quarter | Revenue, $ million | Change |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone | 54,252 | +21.7% |
| Services | 30,739 | +12.1% |
| Mac | 10,352 | +28.7% |
| Wearables, Home and Accessories | 7,883 | +6.5% |
| iPad | 6,191 | -5.9% |
| Total net sales | 109,417 | +16.4% |
Apple fiscal third quarter ended 27 June 2026 against the quarter ended 28 June 2025, from Apple’s condensed consolidated statements of operations, ranked by revenue; percentage changes are our calculation. Geographic segments are in the text.
| Device | Price range | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| Huawei Mate XT2, tri-fold | 19,999 to 24,999 yuan (about $2,980 to $3,725) | Sales from 12 September |
| Xiaomi 18 Fold | 10,999 to 14,999 yuan (about $1,640 to $2,235) | Announced 7 September |
| Apple foldable iPhone | Expected above $2,000 | Expected at the 9 September event |
Huawei and Xiaomi yuan prices as carried by CNBC Arabia on 7 September; dollar figures are our conversion at 6.71 yuan per dollar, the rate quoted on 7 September. The Apple price is the roadmap report’s expectation, not an announced price.
Why it matters: The launch cycle ahead is the largest in Apple’s history and it starts from record June quarter revenue, a 50 percent gross margin and 62 billion dollars of cash and current marketable securities, per the statements. The binding constraint this cycle is supply as much as demand, on our reading. Cook said in July that processor and memory shortages were keeping Apple from meeting demand for iPhones and Macs, and the 2 Chinese launches this week show the same memory costs pushing foldable prices to 3,725 dollars at the top of Huawei’s range. A 2,000 dollar plus iPhone that sells out is a different problem from one that does not sell, and the component build on the June balance sheet is the trace of Apple buying ahead of that problem, on our reading, whatever the products it was bought for. The growth is also broad: every segment outside the Americas grew faster than the Americas’ 11.1 percent, with Europe and Greater China up 22.4 percent each, Rest of Asia Pacific 15.6 percent and Japan 13.4 percent, on our calculation.
Outlook: The first test is Wednesday’s event and the foldable’s price and ship date. The second is the September quarter itself, where Apple guided to 9 to 11 percent growth and where the inventory build and the tariff refund effect on margin will be visible in the statements, on our reading. The third is China, where the second quarter share numbers put Apple 4.5 percentage points behind Huawei before either company’s new foldable reached a shelf. The reporting cited above carries no shipment forecast for the foldable iPhone, so any volume number before the event is a guess, and we carry none.
Sources: Bloomberg via Asharq Business, CNBC Arabia, Apple, US Securities and Exchange Commission, Reuters, CNBC, IDC via CNBC Arabia, The Edge.
