Apple CEO John Ternus has taken a swipe at the first foldable phones from other companies, in a new TIME interview. The target matters here. TIME places his comment in a passage about early foldables from the 2010s, not about the Android foldables on sale today.
TIME describes those first attempts as fragile phones with a big, obvious crease. That’s the context for Ternus’s verdict:
The other examples in the world felt kind of cheap and crappy
John Ternus, Apple CEO, in an interview with TIME
The interview runs in TIME’s Best Inventions of 2026 package, in a feature by Andrew R. Chow about Ternus and the iPhone Duo. MacRumors notes that Ternus took over as Apple’s CEO on September 1.
What Ternus was and wasn’t talking about with foldables
It would be easy to read the line as a dig at Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold or other current Android foldables. TIME’s framing doesn’t support that reading. The remark is about the first attempts at the category, years before Apple shipped its own.
Ternus has been more generous to current Android designs before. Last month, he credited Android foldables with getting the aspect ratio right first. Read together, the two comments suggest a familiar pitch. In our reading, the implied story is that others went early and Apple waited until it could do better.
Why this is still a sales pitch
A CEO praising his own company’s design in a magazine profile is opinion, not evidence. Arriving late to a category lets any company learn from others’ early mistakes. It also lets that company describe the delay as discipline rather than caution.
To be fair, the criticism of early foldables has a basis. TIME’s own description of those phones as fragile and heavily creased backs up Ternus’s point.
But the iPhone Duo has to prove itself on durability, not in interviews. Apple’s hardware chief has already had to defend the Duo’s crease, so the problem Ternus mocks hasn’t vanished. For buyers, the useful comparison is with today’s Galaxy and Pixel foldables after a year of use. A first attempt from the 2010s is a much easier rival to beat.
You can read our full rundown of the iPhone Duo’s price, specs and release date for the hardware details.
Ternus on the memory supply crunch
The foldable jab wasn’t the only notable answer. In the second of two September interviews, Ternus told TIME that memory supply constraints amount to a crisis. He added that Apple believes no option should be ruled out.
TIME links that stance to a Financial Times report from July. According to the FT, Apple had begun testing memory chips made by a Chinese company to increase supply. TIME says the report drew a swift rebuke from a bipartisan group of US senators. Their letter to Apple argued the move would put national security at risk.
The crisis framing is Apple’s own, and it conveniently presents sourcing choices as forced on the company. Keeping every option open now carries a political cost as well as a supply one. That is the answer from this interview with real consequences, far more than a jab at phones from the 2010s.
