Apple’s $2,000-plus foldable iPhone was a decade in the making

Around 2020, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook returned from a trip to Asia unusually energized about a new product category: foldable phones.

During visits to China and elsewhere in the region, the executive saw growing numbers of consumers using folding devices from Samsung Electronics Co., Huawei Technologies Co. and other smartphone makers. He came back convinced that Apple needed one of its own and pushed the company to accelerate its efforts in what was still a nascent market.

As it happened, Apple’s secretive core technology development teams within the hardware engineering organization had already been studying foldable phones, displays and related components for years.