Apple introduces new foldable phone as Gen Z embraces everything 'dumb' and 'vintage'

Christy Strawser (0:01)

The day's biggest stories, the people behind the headlines, the conversations you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Christy Strawser, you're listening to Audacy's On Deadline. We're always looking forward, but every once in a while, it's valuable to look behind. In that vein, let's talk about a new flip phone. Did we read that right?

Yeah, and it's from Apple. Here's KCBS in the Bay Area.

SPEAKER_2 (0:25)

The new devices expected to be announced include a foldable phone, new Apple Watches and an iPhone 18

Josh Constein, partner with tech venture capital firm Signal Fire. Now, Josh, thank you for joining us. Talk to me about some of these products.

Paul Hockman (0:39)

Yeah, the star of the show is expected to be Apple's first foldable iPhone. Now, the question is, do people want this more complex approach to a phone? Yes, unfolded, you're going to have a much bigger display. So if you're someone who's predominantly using it for watching movies, Netflix, things like that, this could be a great win. But the size, the shape could make it more difficult to hold, could be a little bit more fragile as well. Now Samsung has had foldable phones for quite a while. So the question is, is this something that, with a $2,000 expected price point, is that going to be a big moneymaker for Apple? Then the other major products we're expecting are new Apple watches, which include blood pressure and heart rate tracking, new Apple AirPods, they have noise cancelling but not the sort of occluding silicone style AirPods Pros, and then the new base level iPhone Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro, which is not supposed to have very substantial upgrades, a little better camera, a little better battery, a little better processor. You've definitely seen Apple's products overall kind of slow down in how overt their product updates and changes are. And so this foldable iPhone is one of the first big new form factors for them in almost a decade.

SPEAKER_2 (1:57)

Not really talking a lot about artificial intelligence, which seems to be with a lot of major tech companies are pushing these days, pushing these apps, AI. Why do you think Apple is taking a backseat?

Paul Hockman (2:07)

This is a real issue for Apple. They have got to get AI figured out and soon. For instance, series dictation is still remarkably inaccurate. Compared to modern products like Whisper Flow, which you can even use on your Mac and iPhone and have almost perfect dictation and accuracy on transcription, you would think that they would have this by now. I can't believe they haven't launched a $10 a month Siri Plus with premium dictation accuracy. But the question becomes, when are they ready to really roll out their deeper AI features? They've had some writing assistance, some smarter notifications, but nothing that big of a deal or that's been very popular.

But Apple also has this history of saying, we don't necessarily want to be the first. They didn't want to be the first smartphone. They didn't want to be the first MP3 player. They want to do it best. They want to wait till the technology is ready for the average person to need it. And so to me, the big question is, how do they get iMessage involved? That's been the hottest thing in the startup world right now, is new AI agents that use your text message as the main communication channel. That is how AI goes mainstream, not with some destination product, some new behavior pattern you have to adopt, but the idea of you just texting a computer to do things for you the same way you might text a personal assistant or even ask for a favor from a friend.

Christy Strawser (3:26)

Another trend from the past is in-person shopping. Who's ready to spend a day at the Mall of America? Here's Adam and Jordana in Minneapolis.

Adam (3:37)

Jordana, these viral fads that are showing up at Mall of America.

Because I know you and Audrey did this and you wrote about it in Axios about how you went to these, I don't know if they're pop-ups or they're new stores at the Mall of America that is specifically targeting the TikTok generation. You know, kids see these things on TikTok, on the TikTok shop. That's a thing by the way, of course it is. And then they come to life at the Mall of America. Tell us more about them.

Jordana (4:07)

No, it's a super popular retailer and they sell kind of the blind boxes, the Labooboo, the different collectibles along with-

Adam (4:14)

What is a blind box?

Jordana (4:15)

Makeup, TikToks, a blind box is all of these different collectibles like the Labooboo that people might have heard of, where you don't know which one you're getting until you open the box. So you know kind of I'm getting this type of figurine or this, there's one called like a fuggler or something quite ugly, a little troll egg doll. But yeah, we have noticed over the past year or so, we kept on noticing when the Mall of America announced new stores that they'd say, viral mac and cheese brand, viral claw machine arcade and that viral clothing brand, Etiquette, you know, all of, I don't know if I pronounced that one right, but you know, all of these stores were being touted and marketed as viral.