Forget the AI Headlines: Apple’s First Foldable iPhone Could Be the Stock’s Biggest Catalyst in Years
https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/06/09/forget-the-ai-headlines-apples-first-foldable-ipho/
Publish Date: 2026-06-09 23:54:00
Source Domain: www.fool.com
Most of the recent conversation around Apple (AAPL 3.61%) has centered on artificial intelligence (AI). At its annual developers conference this week, the tech giant walked through a long-awaited overhaul of its Siri voice assistant and its broader Apple Intelligence AI features — and investors weren’t especially impressed. After touching an all-time high of about $317 earlier this month, shares have eased back to around $291 as of this writing.
But for a company worth about $4.3 trillion, where the iPhone still brings in about half of all revenue, the more important near-term question may have little to do with AI. It could come down to hardware — and specifically, whether Apple can keep its current upgrade wave going while adding something genuinely new to the lineup.
There’s reason to think it can.
Image source: Getty Images.
The iPhone’s recent momentum
In its fiscal second quarter of 2026 (the period ended March 28, 2026), Apple’s iPhone revenue rose 22% year over year to about $57 billion — a record for the March period. And that capped a streak that began the moment the iPhone 17 arrived.
The iPhone 17 lineup launched last September. Apple set a September-quarter iPhone record to close out fiscal 2025, then turned in its best iPhone quarter ever over the holidays, before the 22% jump in the most recent quarter. In fact, demand actually ran ahead of what the company could build, with Apple pointing to component shortages as a limit on how much iPhone revenue it could book.
What stands out, though, is who is buying. Apple said it set a March-quarter record for iPhone upgraders, and its installed base of active devices — already more than 2.5 billion — climbed to yet another all-time high.
“With iPhone 17, we’re seeing a strong response not only from customers upgrading from previous generations, but also from people choosing iPhone for the very first time,” said CEO Tim Cook in the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings call.
But can this…
