alt Hacker NewsI feel like the average tech enthusiast just assumes that most people have computers, but they do not. Most people have a phone as a primary computing device. Tablets have gone up in popularity, but for a significant portion of people, their only device is a phone. Those people are buying phones on carrier financing or other deals, so they don't even see the full cost of their device at all. So for people doing this type of upgrade cycle, a folding phone is quite compelling: an expanded screen size for watching video, consuming content, or heck, even maybe productivity, while being effectively a marginal upgrade in cost on a monthly payment.
Also, just for the record, some carriers in Japan are offering financing that gives you the option of paying over 48 months and Apple offers 36 months. Is that quite absurd to most people? Absolutely, but for the average person who wants a bigger screen sometimes, the cost is not even going up much on a monthly basis.
For the record, especially in Japan, folio cases where you open your phone like a book are already the default. Effectively most people on the train have their phone open in some "Duo-ish" form-factor already. So the jump from a folio case to a folding phone is already substantially lower.
Obviously the gimmick nature of folding is not the compelling reason why people want folding phones. The question is more about tradeoffs, and I think that especially in asia, the demand for folding phones is quite obvious: upgrade your primary PC to have a huge display when you want it that way, otherwise it stays compact enough to be with you all the time.
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Are you sure this phone-only segment will pay twice the price for a little more screen estate? Maybe… But why not recommend to these folks to get an ipad mini with an e-sim? You get the bigger screen at less than half the price, and it still fits into the pocket of a coat at least. You could even buy one of those Logitech BT keyboards and have a mini laptop.
Apple's financing is 0%. While it may seem absurd for a phone, the smart money is on taking financing—so long as you're a responsible spender, which many are not.
48 months financing is two years. If you upgrade your phone less often than every year, what’s absurd about that?
The problem with that argument is that it is stupidly expensive, no matter how you look at it. It's a $2000 phone, for the same money you can get an iPhone 18 Pro and a MacBook Neo. Or get an iPhone 17 / 17e and save yourself $300 / $500. Or swap the MacBook for an iPad and save up to an additional $350.
Carrier financing doesn't make this go away. It's still a $60/month plan vs a $100+/month one. You're paying significantly more to have a worse primary compute device. For most people, that's going to be a rather hard sell.
The only benefit is that you have it on you at all times. I would argue that this is an attractive selling point for tech enthusiasts, but most people aren't going to care.