Apple is the biggest consumer electronics player that is yet to dabble in foldable devices. It seems the company’s plans for a foldable device could actually be more ambitious than any rival has attempted so far. According to Bloomberg, the company’s next big product category could be, well, a big foldable iPad.
The report mentions “a giant iPad that unfolds into the size of two iPad Pros side-by-side.” The biggest challenge for Apple has been eliminating the crease in the middle of the flexible screen, and it seems the company’s engineers have solved that piece of the puzzle to a large extent.
The prototype device is said to offer “a nearly invisible crease.” So far, the likes of OnePlus, Vivo, and Samsung have launched phones with increasingly “seamless” foldable screens. However, the crease is still very much there, though the situation has improved over the past few years.
“Apple’s approach would be different because it wants the screen to look like a single, uninterrupted piece of glass,” adds the report. The company has reportedly been experimenting with the concept for a while now, and it could hit the shelves in the vicinity of 2028.
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Citing an alleged leak, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman mentions that the foldable device could use an 18.8-inch flexible panel. Another interesting bit of information mentioned in the report is that the device could run a version of iPadOS with some macOS DNA thrown into the mix.
Once again, this is not likely going to be a device that embraces the iPadOS-macOS hybrid dreams that many iPad Pro users have harbored for years. There is, however, some hope that by the time Apple’s foldable iPad concept arrives, the underlying OS will have matured to offer more room for productivity and computing than what it currently allows.
So far, the closest implementations of what Apple is reportedly developing are the Asus Zenbook Fold OLED and the HP Spectre Foldable laptops. However, both these machines are pretty expensive, starting at $3,500 in the U.S. market. The situation is not too different with Huawei’s triple-fold phone that arrived earlier this year.
For comparison, the fastest iPads with an M-series silicon start at a thousand dollars. Apple will have to pull off a magic wand trick from its engineering division and supply chain to land at an asking price where the foldable iPad doesn’t become too pricey to approach, even for enthusiasts.
The Vision Pro headset has already proved to be an uber-expensive adventure for Apple, one that failed to revolutionize the augmented reality (AR) and VR segment owing to its $3,500 sticker price. In the meanwhile, work on a foldable iPhone is reportedly still on the table, but it would take a while before Apple puts it on the shelves.
