Apple's September 9 Event: Foldable iPhone Ultra, AirPods, and a Price Shock

Apple's big autumn launch lands tomorrow, and for the first time in the company's history, the headline product is not a slab of glass with rounded corners. The foldable iPhone Ultra is finally real, finally confirmed, and finally arriving in stores sooner than most people expected. But there is a catch, and it is a big one: you are almost certainly going to pay more for every iPhone this year, not just the folding one.

What's Actually Being Announced

Apple's 9 September event is expected to feature three product families. The foldable iPhone Ultra is the obvious showstopper, a device the company has been rumoured to be developing for years. Alongside it, Apple is expected to refresh its AirPods lineup and announce updates to the HomePod range. The standard iPhone 18 series will also be present, though it is being overshadowed by its more dramatic sibling.

The foldable iPhone Ultra is expected to use a clamshell form factor rather than a book-style fold, which puts it in competition with Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip series rather than the Z Fold. That is an interesting strategic choice. Clamshell folds are easier to carry but sacrifice screen real estate when open. Given Apple's obsession with display quality, it will be fascinating to see how they handle the crease that every other manufacturer has struggled with.

Why Your Next iPhone Costs More

Here is the story that deserves more attention than it is getting. The reason iPhone prices are rising across the board in 2026 is not greed, or not entirely. There is a genuine supply chain problem with DRAM and NAND flash memory. Micron and other major memory manufacturers have been running tighter production cycles to manage inventory, and that has pushed component costs up significantly in the second half of 2026. When Apple's suppliers pay more, Apple pays more, and eventually you pay more.

The Verge's supply chain reporting points to the RAM shortage as the primary driver. The iPhone 18 base model is expected to start at around 899 dollars in the US, up from 799 dollars for the iPhone 17. In the UK, that translates to a similar proportional increase when you factor in currency and local taxes. The foldable iPhone Ultra is expected to start north of 1,799 dollars, placing it firmly in premium laptop territory.

That price point raises a genuine question about who this product is actually for. Early adopters will buy it regardless, but foldables have never broken into mainstream adoption anywhere except South Korea, where Samsung's home-market marketing is relentless. Apple has brand loyalty that Samsung could only dream of, but loyalty has limits when you are asking someone to spend nearly two thousand dollars on a first-generation form factor.

AirPods and HomePod Updates

The supporting cast at tomorrow's event is worth paying attention to. The AirPods Pro are expected to get a new chip and improved hearing health features, building on the FDA-cleared hearing aid functionality Apple introduced in late 2024. If the new AirPods Pro push further into clinical hearing assistance territory, that is genuinely significant for the roughly 430 million people worldwide with disabling hearing loss.

The HomePod refresh is less exciting on paper, but Apple has been quietly building its smart home ambitions through the Home app and Matter compatibility. A new HomePod with a better chip and potentially a small display would make more sense now than it would have two years ago, given how much the smart home ecosystem has matured.

My Take

Tomorrow's event is the most interesting Apple launch in at least five years, which is saying something given the Vision Pro arrived in 2024. The foldable iPhone Ultra is a genuine hardware bet, not an incremental spec bump. If Apple has solved the crease problem and built software that genuinely uses the folding form factor rather than just stretching iOS across it, this could be the device that finally makes foldables matter outside of enthusiast circles.

But the price story is the one I will be watching most closely. If the base iPhone 18 crosses 900 dollars at launch, that is a psychological barrier that matters. The memory shortage is real, but consumers do not buy components, they buy phones, and the optics of a price rise right after a record-breaking fiscal year are not great. Apple's communications team will have their work cut out.