Apple is short on supply of its first ever Foldable iPhone
Apple is about to announce the most anticipated iPhone in a decade. And then make it almost impossible to actually own one.
September is going to be a frustrating month for a lot of people.
Apple is expected to stand on a stage in Cupertino, unfold its first-ever foldable iPhone — widely rumoured to be called the iPhone Ultra — and show the world what it's been working on for years. The leaks suggest it will be extraordinary. A 7.8-inch inner display. A 5.5-inch cover screen. Under 5mm thick when unfolded — thinner than the iPhone Air. A liquid metal hinge engineered to a standard of precision that no other foldable manufacturer has attempted. A starting price of somewhere between $2,300 and $2,500.
And then Apple will take pre-orders. And most of you reading this won't get one for months.
That's not speculation. That's what the numbers say — and the numbers, courtesy of supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo whose July 5th report landed two days ago, are unusually specific about just how bad the shortage is going to be.
The Numbers That Should Make You Pay Attention Right Now
Here's the core of what Kuo's survey found, stated plainly.
Apple's assembly partners will ship somewhere between 500,000 and one million foldable iPhone units in the third quarter of 2026. That's the quarter that covers July, August, and September — the window in which Apple traditionally announces and immediately sells its new iPhones. One million units, maximum, by the end of September. That's the best-case scenario for how many will exist when Apple takes the stage.
For comparison: Apple is expected to ship 20 to 22 million iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max units in that same quarter. Twenty to twenty-two million versus one million. That's the gap between a normal iPhone launch and what is about to happen with the foldable.
Total second-half shipments across all of 2026 are forecast at 7 to 8 million units. Apple separately told suppliers to prepare components for up to 10 million, which suggests the company itself is hoping for higher production than Kuo thinks is achievable. Either way — 7 million, 8 million, 10 million — divided across a global customer base of hundreds of millions of iPhone users who have been waiting years for this device, the supply picture is grim.
Kuo's conclusion: the iPhone Ultra will sell out immediately after pre-orders open. Delivery estimates will stretch to four to six weeks within hours of pre-orders going live, and those lead times could stay elevated through December. His estimate for the resale premium — how much above retail price scalpers will charge for units they've secured — is 50 to 100 percent. On a $2,500 phone, that means resale prices somewhere between $3,750 and $5,000.
Let that sit for a moment.
Why Apple Can't Just Make More of Them
The obvious question is why Apple can't simply build more. It's Apple — the most valuable company in the world, with the most powerful supply chain relationships in consumer electronics. If anyone can will a manufacturing ramp-up into existence through sheer purchasing power, it's them.
The answer is that foldable phones are genuinely harder to make than any flat iPhone that has come before, and the specific innovations Apple has built into the Ultra are making that even harder.
The hinge is the central problem. Apple's liquid metal hinge design — which the company has spent years engineering specifically to minimise the crease that makes most foldables look cheap — requires a level of precision manufacturing that existing production lines weren't built for. Reports from earlier in 2026 described the hinge as consistently failing to meet Apple's quality control standards under conditions of prolonged, high-frequency opening and closing. Apple fixed those issues enough to maintain a September launch window, but the fix didn't make the hinge easy to build at scale. It just made it buildable.
The display is the second challenge. Apple is reportedly using a dual-layer glass structure specifically designed to minimise the visible crease when the phone is unfolded — the thing that has made every Samsung Galaxy Fold and Google Pixel Fold feel like a compromise the moment you look at them straight-on. Building that structure at production volumes is a different engineering problem than building a prototype that works, and the yield rates — the percentage of units that come off the production line meeting Apple's quality standards — have been lower than the company hoped.
A separate report from DigiTimes noted production was running one to two months behind schedule as recently as April, even while maintaining that a fall launch was still on track. Mass production was planned to begin in July. That timeline means Apple is essentially building inventory in real time, with almost no buffer stock ahead of the announcement.
The iPhone X comparison Kuo keeps making is the right one. When Apple launched the iPhone X in September 2017 — its first OLED all-screen iPhone with Face ID and no home button — the production challenges were similar in nature. Manufacturing something genuinely new at iPhone volumes is a different challenge than refining something that's already been built a hundred million times. The iPhone X was announced in September and didn't ship until November. Pre-orders opened and were gone within minutes. It stayed in short supply through Christmas.
The iPhone Ultra is looking like a more extreme version of that same story.
What Apple Is Likely to Do About It
Based on the supply numbers, Kuo believes Apple will follow the same playbook it used with the iPhone X: announce the device in September alongside the iPhone 18 lineup, but stagger the actual release.
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max — the devices with enough units to meet immediate global demand — will be available in September as usual. The iPhone Ultra will be announced at the same event, shown off, detailed, and then given a later release date. October or November, most likely. This lets Apple control the narrative without putting an empty pre-order page in front of millions of customers the moment the keynote ends.
There's a complicating factor. Apple is reportedly restructuring its entire 2026 iPhone launch slate. The iPhone 18 Ultra, 18 Pro, and 18 Pro Max are all expected in autumn. The standard iPhone 18, the iPhone 18e, and a second-generation iPhone Air are all expected to follow in spring 2027. It's an unusual split for Apple, which has historically launched its full lineup in a single September wave. The implication is that the company is prioritising getting the premium devices — including the foldable — to market over maintaining its traditional single-launch rhythm.
Whether that split helps or hurts the iPhone Ultra's supply situation is unclear. What is clear is that the device will be available in limited quantities for months, and that anyone who wants one in 2026 is going to need to treat the pre-order window as a sprint rather than a casual browse.
The Memory Shortage Nobody Is Talking About
The hinge and display challenges are the manufacturing story everyone is focused on. But there's a second supply problem running in parallel that could independently complicate Apple's plans.
A global memory shortage, driven primarily by the explosive demand from AI data centres, is pushing up component costs across the entire consumer electronics industry. Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo have all cut their annual production targets in response. Apple, with its unmatched purchasing power and supplier relationships, is better positioned than any of its rivals — but not immune.
Apple is reportedly in talks to source memory chips for Chinese market devices from Chinese manufacturers ChangXin Memory Technologies and Yangtze Memory Technologies, both of which appear on a Pentagon list of companies with alleged military ties. Apple has not confirmed those discussions, and they would apply to China-sold units rather than global markets. But the fact that Apple is even exploring that route is a signal of how seriously the memory shortage is being taken at the highest level of the company's supply chain operations.
The memory shortage won't stop the iPhone Ultra from launching. But it's a pressure that sits on top of every other manufacturing challenge the device is already dealing with. Apple has already implemented price increases on MacBook and iPad lines as component costs rise. Whether that same pressure pushes the iPhone Ultra's price higher than the $2,300 to $2,500 range Kuo is quoting remains to be seen.
What This Means If You Actually Want One
Kuo's advice, delivered in unusually direct terms for a supply chain analyst, is this: if you want a foldable iPhone in 2026, the pre-order window is not optional. The announcement in September is not the moment to act — it's the moment to have your Apple ID, your payment method, and your delivery address already loaded and ready. The pre-order window is the moment to act, and that window will likely close within hours.
Given that pre-orders are expected to sell out immediately, waiting even a day after they open could mean a December delivery at best. By that point, the resale market will be operating at 50 to 100 percent above retail, and the secondary market options will be either expensive or non-existent.
Kuo expects the supply crunch to ease meaningfully by the first quarter of 2027, once production has fully ramped and launch excitement has settled. If you're comfortable waiting — if the idea of spending $2,500 on a first-generation product with a manufacturing challenge history gives you pause — early 2027 is when the iPhone Ultra will be genuinely easy to buy at retail price. By then, the first wave of real-world reviews will also have settled any questions about crease visibility, hinge durability, and whether the software experience fully justifies the form factor.
That's the rational choice. It's also the choice that means watching everyone else unfold their iPhone Ultra at a coffee shop for six months before you get yours.
The Bigger Frustration
There's something genuinely irritating about this situation that goes beyond the inconvenience of pre-order queues and supply shortages.
Apple has been watching Samsung and Google build, sell, and improve foldable phones since 2019. Seven years of competing devices, seven years of customer demand signals, seven years of watching the foldable category develop into a real market. And yet when Apple finally arrives with its own version — likely the best-engineered foldable any company has ever attempted — it's going to be available in quantities so small that most people who want one simply won't be able to get one for months.
The manufacturing challenges are real and they're not entirely Apple's fault. Building something this technically ambitious at iPhone volumes is genuinely hard. But the result is a launch that will frustrate exactly the customers who are most excited — the ones who have been waiting, who have the money ready, who were prepared to pay $2,500 on day one because they believe in what Apple has built.
Those customers deserve better than a six-week wait time appearing within hours of pre-orders opening.
September is going to be a frustrating month.
Also read: iPhone 17 price crash- Know more
