Premium iPhones Are Apple’s Answer to Slowing Unit Growth
Bloomberg reports that Apple’s glass-centric iPhone redesign remains on track for 2027, despite a Jefferies analyst’s claim that it had been canceled. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Anurag Rana argues the significance of such a model, and a potential foldable iPhone, lies in their ability to raise Apple’s average selling prices as memory costs rise and handset-unit growth matures. Higher-priced devices can improve the product mix, he says, but their impact depends on how many of Apple’s buyers will pay for them.
Apple’s 2027 redesign is principally a pricing question
Bloomberg reported that Apple’s planned glass-centric iPhone remains on track for the iPhone’s 20th anniversary in 2027, countering an analyst report that the redesign had been canceled. The reported overhaul would use glass across the front and back of the phone, curving into the sides, while retaining a metal band. Apple declined to comment, according to the reporting cited on screen.
A Bloomberg design-summary graphic described the plan as a “glass-centric overhaul,” with glass extending from the front and rear surfaces into the sides of a device that still has a metal band. The report said Apple’s product roadmap had not changed.
The central question is not simply whether Apple may introduce a distinctive anniversary handset. It is whether new form factors can give Apple a durable way to lift iPhone average selling prices, or ASPs, and keep them higher for longer.
That matters because the company has not raised iPhone prices in the premium segment while memory costs are rising, according to ? anurag-rana of Bloomberg Intelligence. Rana said higher memory prices would affect unit shipments, even as Apple had gained market share over the previous two quarters and was expected to do so again in the current quarter.
Apple is likely to raise iPhone prices in the fall, Rana said. But consumer-device price increases come with a familiar trade-off: shipments tend to decline. If unit growth becomes harder to sustain, his argument was that price realization becomes the primary route to continued iPhone-segment growth.
ASP increase is the single most important thing for them to continue to show iPhone segment growth rate for the next couple of years.
The glass-centric model is therefore relevant as a possible premium tier, not merely as an industrial-design reset. Ed Ludlow framed it as one mechanism—alongside a foldable iPhone—that could shift Apple’s handset mix toward more expensive models.
A $2,500 foldable would lift the mix—but volume sets the limit
? anurag-rana illustrated the opportunity with a potential foldable iPhone. If it arrives at roughly $2,500, as he said Mark Gurman had indicated, it would represent a substantial step up from the roughly $1,200 to $1,300 price range Rana associated with an iPhone Pro Max.
The appeal is straightforward: a buyer already willing to purchase Apple’s highest-end conventional iPhone could be offered a similar device at a significantly higher price. That could lift the average price Apple receives even without expanding the overall iPhone customer base.
But Rana emphasized the denominator. Apple sells roughly 220 million to 240 million phones annually, he said, and the central question is how many customers could plausibly move into the foldable category. A very high-priced device can improve the mix, but its effect on Apple’s broader iPhone economics depends on the share of its customer base willing to pay for the step up.
The glass-centric anniversary iPhone carries the same unresolved issue. No price for the glass-centric model was reported, leaving its potential contribution to the premium mix unclear. Its relevance is that it could add another high-end choice to a product line seeking to sustain revenue growth as units become harder to grow.
Rana did not treat either new form factor as the main variable. Rising memory prices, he said, matter more to Apple than any particular handset design.
Memory prices far, far more important for Apple than anything else.
A foldable or a glass-centric redesign could support a more expensive handset mix, but neither removes the demand pressure that can follow higher component costs and higher retail prices.
Rana saw valuation—not an operational miss—as the explanation for the stock decline
Ed Ludlow asked whether Apple’s most recent earnings reaction reflected supply-chain mismanagement or a misreading of demand. ? anurag-rana offered a different explanation for the stock’s decline: valuation. Before the decline, he said, Apple traded at a multiple in the low 30s while hyperscalers traded in the low 20s.
In Rana’s view, that gap was the larger mismatch, rather than a newly disclosed operational problem. Apple’s other commentary was broadly in line with expectations, he said, and the company delivered a strong iPhone number. But he also described that kind of result as difficult to replicate given how saturated the phone market is around the world.
That constraint gives the premium-device argument its investor relevance. A higher-priced foldable or glass-centric anniversary model could improve revenue per handset, but Apple would still need enough buyers to absorb higher prices as memory costs rise and unit demand matures. The new designs matter as possible tools for that task, not as a substitute for it.