Apple's Projected Foldable iPhone Plan Is a Positive for This Holding

Over the weekend, Bloomberg’s Apple AAPL columnist Mark Gurman penned a piece laying out the next three years for the iPhone, Apple’s flagship product and a key driver of its revenue and profits.

It begins this year with the iPhone Air that will replace the entry-level iPhone 16 Plus and continues with the introduction of the company’s foldable iPhone next year. We’ve talked more than a bit about that forthcoming device and why it’s a positive driver for our position in Universal Display OLED shares, but this is what Gruman had to say about the foldable:

"Code-named V68, it looks like Samsung Electronics Co.’s book-style foldables that open into a small tablet. It’s slated to feature five cameras (one on the front, one on the inside, and two on the back) and — like the iPhone Air — will lack a SIM-card slot. It will also use Touch ID instead of Face ID, making it a bit of a throwback in that respect. But I still think it will be hugely popular with Apple’s legion of consumers who are willing to spend whatever to get the latest and greatest.

"Apple’s suppliers are already working on the new model and plan to ramp up production early next year for a fall release…"

Gurman continued:

"Then comes 2027, when Apple celebrates its smartphone’s 20th birthday with a curved glass 'iPhone 20.' This design will finally break from the squared-off slab we’ve lived with since 2020 and move to an approach with curved glass edges all around. It should fit nicely with the new Liquid Glass-based interface for iOS and other operating systems due to be released next month."

If you’re thinking this sounds like the upcoming 2025 iPhone refresh in a few weeks is poised to be another year of incremental upgrades (camera, memory, etc.), that’s most likely correct.

Our view that the current iPhone upgrade cycle would be tied to improvements in Apple Intelligence remains, and the forthcoming AI upgrade for Apple’s Siri voice assistant is a key issue. Earlier this year, Apple pushed out that expected 2024 event to 2026. But it now appears Apple is at a crossroads — it can either power it with its own in-house Apple Foundation Models or pivot to using models from an outside provider. Reports are that Apple has been in conversations about the latter with Google GOOGL, Anthropic PBC and OpenAI.

Discussions with Anthropic have been making headlines, but recently, Apple approached Google about making a version of its Gemini AI models that could run on its Private Cloud Compute servers and power Siri. In our view, that would be a major win for Google, and an agreement between the two would likely be a bridge from the Google-Apple search relationship. In 2024, it was reported that Google paid Apple $20 billion for Google to be the default search engine in the Safari browser. With Apple’s R&D spending running $26 billion to $31 billion annually over the last three years, it’s a good bet that with a U.S. judge set to toss that search deal out in the coming weeks, Apple is looking to replace those dollars.

We all know that Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about its product roadmap, but with the formal release of iOS 26 in September, perhaps the management team will offer an update on its AI-powered Siri efforts as it debuts its newest iPhone model. That would be a nice development for Apple and potentially Google.

Between now and Apple’s iPhone event, which has yet to be formally announced, we have August revenue reports from Taiwan Semiconductor TSM and Foxconn, as well as August global search engine market share data. Based on what we see in those items and learn from upcoming investor conferences, we’ll look to revisit our AAPL and GOOGL price targets as warranted.

On September 9, Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud, will participate in the Goldman Sachs 2025 Communacopia + Technology Conference.

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long APPL, OLED and GOOGL.