Apple’s Sept. 9 event is drawing intense attention from the tech industry, with the company’s first foldable iPhone expected to take center stage alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max, as well as the debut of new CEO John Ternus.

The US technology giant’s biggest event of the year will take place just two days after Huawei is expected to unveil the Mate XT 2, the successor to its premium tri-fold smartphone.

Analysts expect Apple’s entry into foldables to breathe new life into a mobile industry struggling with soaring component costs.

“Apple entering the foldable market will not only reignite growth in a segment that has been losing momentum, but fundamentally reshape the trajectory of the entire market,” said Nabila Popal, senior research director at IDC.

Popal forecasts that Apple will ship more than 17 million foldable iPhones in 2027, capturing around 40% of the global market.

“Apple will be in a position to compete head-to-head with Huawei and Samsung in markets they have long dominated - an extraordinary outcome for a product line only entering the second year of its lifecycle,” she said.

According to IDC, the foldable smartphone segment is expected to grow 13% this year and another 18% in 2027, making it the “only bright spot” in an otherwise bleak market.

IDC’s latest report projects that global smartphone shipments will fall 16.7% in 2026, the steepest annual decline on record and worse than the 13.9% contraction forecast in the previous quarter.

A severe memory chip shortage, fueled by the wave of investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure, is hitting hardware manufacturers particularly hard in the second half of 2026, pushing half-year shipments down more than 27% from a year earlier.

As shipments plunge, device prices are surging. IDC forecasts that the average selling price of a smartphone worldwide will rise by around 27% this year to $581, with the upward trend potentially extending into 2027.

“The memory tsunami is now hitting in full force, and consumers are starting to pay the price for AI,” warned Francisco Jeronimo, IDC’s vice president for worldwide client devices. “The era of cheap smartphones is officially over. From now on, the winners will be brands with the scale and supply-chain advantages needed to sustain demand at price points consumers have never had to pay before.”

The memory chip crisis is also reverberating across the wider consumer electronics supply chain, eroding profits for manufacturers of personal computers, tablets and digital cameras.

Chinese action-camera maker Insta360 last week reported a 94% plunge in net profit for the first half of the year, primarily due to soaring memory chip prices. The company said record-high component costs had placed heavy pressure on product costs and squeezed margins in the short term.

Insta360 posted net profit of just RMB30.4 million, or about $4.5 million, in the first six months of 2026, a dramatic fall from RMB519.8 million in the same period last year, even as revenue climbed 50% to RMB5.5 billion.

Du Lam