Apple’s Foldable iPhone, Brent Tops $100, AT&T CEO Interview 9/9/26

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Brian Sullivan (1:05)

Can an apple a day keep the market bears at bay? Apple kicking off a big event right now out west. Welcome to Power Lunch here in the east. We are Kelly and Brian. We'll get to apple in a second, but energy also front and center today. Oil here creeping back toward 100 bucks a barrel, but does it even matter to your money?

Kelly Evans (1:24)

Yeah, surprisingly kind of a whimper today, but a big day for AT&T.

Apple's new iPhone is hitting the shelves and AT&T is looking to ride the upgrade wave with a fresh device cycle that could fuel subscriber growth. AT&T CEO John Stankey joins us live from the Goldman Technology Conference with a shareholder update on their growth strategy. We'll talk about that next.

Brian Sullivan (1:43)

All right, so we've got a lot to do, but let us start with the big event of the day.

That is Apple. Now Apple is not only debuting some new products, it is also debuting a new CEO. Mackenzie Sigalos joining us from the event in Cupertino, California. And Mack, I know there's some new things rolling out, but I guess one other big theme would be, let the John Ternes era begin.

Mackenzie Sigalos (2:07)

And so it has right now on stage, John Ternes has been introducing the new foldable phone. This is the most significant form factor change to this device in company history. It is called the iPhone Duo. They compare it to the size of a passport when it's closed, and then it opens up to something that resembles a small iPad. This is why iOS 27 has this new handoff feature, where essentially the same phone number can seamlessly move from an iPhone 18, we just got that, the 18 Pro and Pro Max, over to this new iPhone Duo foldable phone. In terms of what we've seen on the product side so far, that 18 Pro and Pro Max, they are talking about better battery life, introducing a few new colors, saying that the specs inside are better, the A20 Pro chip. So basically incremental updates here to the hardware, about the actual cosmetics of this 18 Pro, very much the same, which is why the foldable is so compelling. Not seeing a lot happening with the stock though, it's down 1%.

What I will say on the AI side of this, because this entire presentation has very been, has been very much about presenting what Apple's AI strategy is. John Ternes selling this idea of the iPhone as the ideal hardware for this new AI era. But some interesting features centered around the watch, that I just want to walk you through briefly. We've got something called Audio Intelligence here, and a feature specifically called Siri Recap. So what this does, Apple says that the watch can use essentially ambient listening throughout the day, and then at the end of the day, give you a wrap-up, a summary of all the conversations you've had. Have to imagine that they've been having a lot of conversations with lawyers about what this means in states that are one-party consent, but certainly a step up in terms of some of the Siri AI features that were first introduced at WWDC here in Cupertino earlier this summer. Guys?

Kelly Evans (3:55)

The foldable is probably, other than seeing John Ternes himself, I thought handled it was such a plum for such a man. Imagine for a second, you're the person who follows Steve Jobs and then Tim Cook, who added four and a half trillion of value. You're that guy. The moment to see he was, he looked at he's on stage, frankly.

Mackenzie Sigalos (4:17)

And that's because he spent half his life at this company, 25 years building the hardware that's really the bread and butter of this company. Half of their revenue, the half a trillion dollars that they bring in every year in terms of overall revenue, but half of that comes from the iPhone and that's what John Ternes has been building. And so this is his big day because yes, he's introducing himself to Wall Street and the consumer, but he's showing what he's been working on in his R&D lab essentially. And so we're getting these bump up specs, but the foldable is something that they have been working on for years now. And this is something where we're still waiting to hear about pricing, that typically comes at the end of the presentation. We don't know yet when they're going to release it. There were reports to indicate that this wouldn't actually come until the end of October, early November. And at least historically, this hasn't been a huge seller across Huawei and Samsung, only 23 million units a year. But you have to imagine, I'm looking at these, I'm going to go test it out in a couple of minutes guys, but I'm looking at the live footage of this, and it's just, nobody's to date has gotten that seamless screen right, and it looks pretty impressive for what I'm seeing right now.