All-in on Ultra-Premium: Apple Omits Its Signature iPhone Base Model for the iPhone Duo at Its Annual Fall Keynote

On September 9, 2026, Apple held its annual fall keynote and released the much-anticipated update to the next generation of iPhones. The keynote's key theme centers on the iPhone 18 Pro as an intelligent personal hub, with an upgraded 2-Nanometer (nm) A20 Pro chip capable of on-device processing to support the company’s push into Apple Intelligence. Accompanying the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models are new updates to the personal intelligence hub’s peripherals, the AirPods 5, Apple Watch Series 12, and the Apple Watch Ultra 4. Using the iPhone 18 Pro as the key processing hub, Apple plans to utilize its on-device processing power to focus its Apple Intelligence push into two main branches: Visual Intelligence and Audio Intelligence.

Finally, Apple announced the launch of its first-ever foldable phone, the iPhone Duo. The iPhone Duo is Apple’s most premium smartphone yet, introducing a new form factor as it enters an increasingly mainstream and crowded foldable market that has grown over the past 7 years.

With the launch of the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the iPhone Duo, the product curiously omitted from the company’s annual fall release is the iPhone 18 base model. The absence of an iPhone 18 strongly suggests Apple’s revamped Fall 2026 strategy, as it likely wants to center its traditionally blockbuster September release on the latest and greatest iPhone it can offer, along with new companion devices that should play a major role in the Apple ecosystem. This means the base-tier iPhone should launch early next year, likely in the Spring of 2027, alongside other main product lines like the iPhone Air 2, updates to the MacBook Neo, and potentially an M6-powered chip for the MacBook or iPad.

The absence of the iPhone 18 launch at the Surprise and Shine event also means the cheapest iPhone 18 available for purchase is the iPhone 18 Pro at US$1,199, compared to the previous year, when the iPhone 17 launched at US$899. The iPhone Duo also debuted at a record-breaking price: US$1,999 for the 256 Gigabyte (GB) model, increasing to US$3,199 for the 2 Terabyte (TB) model. This three-variant smartphone launch strategy points to the company’s deliberate focus on the ultra-premium tier, a price point that Apple traditionally does very well but is increasingly threatened by the growth of fierce competition from Samsung (Galaxy S and Galaxy Fold series), Huawei (Mate, Mate XT and Pura series), and other vendors like HONOR and vivo. In the past year, ABI Research has observed that the smartphone market has largely cooled off and, in many ways, contracted quickly because of the memory chip supply chain crisis, which is driving smartphone Average Selling Prices (ASPs) up substantially. However, while ASP increases have taken a heavy toll on mid- to budget-priced smartphones in 2026, premium and ultra-premium smartphone shipments have largely remained resilient, as evidenced by premium smartphone market leaders like Apple and Samsung continuing to grow their market-share dominance over the rest of the field.

Apple’s doubling down on the ultra-premium market indicates where it sees strong growth potential amid the memory chip crunch. It is leveraging high-performance smartphones to maximize the value of increasing memory costs, rather than using similar-performance, inflated-price memory chips in “daily driver” smartphones that consumers are usually not expected to fully utilize the Apple Intelligence suite. Interestingly, the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max’s launch price is only US$100 more than the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max’s release last year. A less-than-10% increase in the iPhone Pro’s retail price is significant, given that the smartphone market has seen ASP increases north of 20%. That restraint carries over to the foldable line. At US$1,999, the iPhone Duo sits near the top of foldable retail pricing—yet well below the US$2,500 some analysts had anticipated. Priced just US$100 above the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8, its closest rival in performance and form factor, the iPhone Duo enters as a credible challenger to the incumbent.

With the aggressive pricing of the iPhone 18 Pro series and the iPhone Duo, Apple is showing its willingness to battle in and capture as much of the ultra-premium, price-tiered smartphone market as possible. By leveraging its massive installed base of iOS users and the ability to weather price fluctuations in the memory crisis through its revenue streams, the company will attempt to position its Fall release products as both a compelling upgrade to its current users and a competitively priced product in both the slab and foldable form factor for new customers. This ultra-premium tier-focused Fall product launch is ultimately Apple’s game plan for the rest of 2026, cornering the top end of the smartphone market through price competitiveness and software-led innovation.

Vendors looking to compete and defend their position in the smartphone market should watch Apple’s game plan. Vendors already reeling from ballooning component prices that are heavily impacting their ASPs should not keep competing on low-margin price competitiveness, especially in the value-tier smartphone market. Instead, they should focus on the value their smartphone range can deliver by narrowing key use cases and the User Experience (UX) each phone provides. With hardware component costs at a historically high level, vendors cannot afford to cram premium components like chipsets, memory chips (Random-Access Memory (RAM)), and Solid-State Drives (SSDs) into a mid-range phone. Instead, they should understand consumers’ expectations for their smartphones and develop efficiently-powered software that blends seamlessly into the consumer UX with appropriately powered chips and components. This realignment in smartphone strategy is drastic but could be the key to reinventing a vendor’s ability to survive in the crowded smartphone market, while also using the memory chip supply chain crisis to remove potential software bloat in its smartphone operating systems.