Apple Debuts $2,000 Foldable iPhone

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Alex Ossola (0:26)

Apple's new CEO unveils the company's first foldable iPhone, and its price starts at almost $2,000.

Plus, the criminal trial for Chinese tech giant Huawei kicks off in New York City. And why states are ripping up their tax breaks for data centers.

Amrith Ramkumar (0:41)

Rolling back these tax exemptions is actually one of the few concrete things politicians can do to win brownie points with their constituents.

Alex Ossola (0:49)

It's Wednesday, September 9th. I'm Alex Ossola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and the business stories that move the world today.

Apple had its biggest product event in years today. It debuted a truly new iPhone, the first foldable iPhone, called the Duo. It's almost like a tablet, but it still fits in your pocket. The larger screen also lets people use more than one app at a time. For example, you can watch a video and text at the same time. Introducing the new iPhone was Apple's new CEO, John Ternes. He took over last week, becoming Apple's third CEO since 1997

His predecessor, Tim Cook, and the rest of Apple's executive team sat in the front at the event as Ternes spoke. The bad news for consumers was that Apple increased iPhone prices, though not as much as some analysts projected. The cost of memory and storage chips inside the smartphone has quintupled since last fall. That's meant that Apple has raised prices across its device lineup to protect its profit margins. For the new foldable Duo, prices start at about $2,000.

Foldable phones aren't new, and growth in the category has stalled. Industry analysts say Apple has an opportunity to capture almost half of all revenue from sales of foldables just this year, even though the Duo won't be released until October 23rd.

In other tech news, the Justice Department's criminal trial against Chinese tech giant Huawei has kicked off in Brooklyn. The case dates from the first Trump administration and is going to trial now after a nearly eight-year wait. In opening statements today, prosecutors told the jury that Huawei systematically stole trade secrets from American companies. Dave Michaels, who covers corporate law enforcement for the journal, breaks down the Justice Department's argument.

Dave Michaels (2:35)

The government says that Huawei is responsible for a pattern of trade secrets theft going back 25, 26 years, stealing technology secrets, intellectual property from competitors, including, and now these names are not in the indictment, but they've been previously reported, companies like Cisco and T-Mobile.

There are very specific claims in the indictment that a Huawei employee was caught sneaking photos at a trade show of the inside of a rival's networking devices, and that it paid a university professor to pose as a researcher interested in getting a company's memory devices so that Huawei could copy it. Examples that the Justice Department says amounts to a long running criminal enterprise, and that also Huawei violated sanctions against Iran by doing business in Iran and misleading banks about the extent of its business in Iran.

Alex Ossola (3:35)

The trial comes just a couple of weeks before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is supposed to go to Washington to meet with President Trump.

Dave Michaels (3:42)

Huawei has said that this is a narrative, that a lot of the charges have been recited earlier in civil lawsuits that have all been resolved. The fact that the United States government is prosecuting a Chinese technological national champion is certainly an inconvenient thing to be going on when the two leaders are meeting in Washington trying to address a bunch of really thorny issues.

Alex Ossola (4:12)

Disappointed investors sent bond yields higher today after the Treasury said it would buy back up to $6 billion in longer term debt tomorrow. Some investors had expected a larger buyback and that sent the 10 year yield to its highest level since 2023 US stock indexes traded lower today. The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P all lost less than 1%.

It was their third straight day in the red. And in energy prices, more fighting in the Middle East sent international oil higher. Brent futures closed today above $101 a barrel. The last time they went above $100 was in July. Triple digit prices for oil sounds scary, the kind of thing that could torpedo the economy. But oil at $100 is actually pretty typical for this century if you adjust for overall inflation. By that measure, oil has averaged around $95 in 2026 prices.