À l’occasion d’un entretien avec le magazine Time, John Ternus discusses the long road covered over fifteen years by Apple teams to finally release the brand's very first foldable-screen smartphone, the iPhone Duo.
Samsung and the 2019 pioneers in the crosshairs
If some detractors see it as a "waste of money", Apple's top executive therefore does not have kind things to say about the competition's foldable models, especially the first models in 2019. Admittedly, Samsung is not formally named, but there is little doubt that the Korean giant, a true trailblazer in this market segment, is directly targeted by the jabs from the Cupertino host.
A vision dating back to 2011
John Ternus explains that as early as 2011, he and five engineers had filed a patent for such a foldable device. "It was obvious that we would eventually reach a point where OLED screens would become flexible," he says. In the meantime, numerous technological barriers have been removed. The manufacturer Royole in 2018, then Huawei and Samsung in 2019, launched the emerging foldable smartphone market. That said, these early models suffered from a lack of sturdiness and, above all, a huge visible crease in the center of the screen. Smartphones that seemed "cheap and lousy" Ternus states.
The premium for technological risk
Unfortunately, taking the rough with the smooth is often the price to pay for being first on the market. It is not certain that Apple would have entered this segment if other manufacturers had not taken the risk of facing criticism with models that were, to say the least, imperfect, but fundamentally bold, and which have clearly improved over the years.