Apple's foldable iPhone is expected to arrive in September against a rival already outrunning its own forecasts.

ETNews reports Samsung is building an extra one million Galaxy Z Fold 8 units, after the 4:3 device took 70 percent of a record 1.44 million Galaxy Z8 series pre-orders. Apple's foldable display – made by Samsung – is rumored to use the same aspect ratio in the same book-style form factor.
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Apple has been testing memory chips from China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) across product lines including iPhones and MacBooks, according to a report today from The Wall Street Journal ($).


Laptop makers HP and Acer have already started using memory chips from CXMT in devices sold outside the U.S. Meanwhile, Apple has held early talks with CXMT about supplying components for devices sold in China, and the company is hoping for a sign-off from the White House before going further. The Financial Times reported last month that Apple had begun qualifying CXMT's DRAM, but today's report is the first to place that testing inside specific product categories.

What could scupper any potential deal are U.S. rules that bar American companies from transferring technology to CXMT, including conversations about technical details and product specifications. Export lawyer Kevin Wolf of Akin Gump told WSJ that Apple can buy off-the-shelf CXMT components and haggle over price, but it can't commission chips designed to its own requirements.

Apple usually has memory specially configured to work optimally with its own silicon, so using standard parts could mean reworking sections of its hardware, or potentially settling for less-than-ideal performance.

What's making Apple's life harder is the fact that a bipartisan group of senators led by Chuck Schumer has asked the company to rule out using Chinese memory entirely. A response to the request is due August 21.

There are supply issues to contend with as well. CXMT has reportedly maxed out production for the year and has little room for new international customers, having already prioritized domestic buyers such as ByteDance, Tencent, and Xiaomi. Its prices reportedly sit level with (and sometimes above) those of Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung. That's bad news for Apple. A fourth supplier only helps if it has chips to sell and sells them cheaper. Right now though, CXMT does neither.

Apple raised prices across its product lineup (excepting iPhone models) in June, blaming memory costs driven by the AI infrastructure demand.
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LG Display is developing a five-layer OLED panel structure that could end up in a future iMac, with an extra layer added to prevent screen burn-in and increase brightness, reports The Elec.


LG Display already builds four-stack OLED panels for high-resolution monitors, and arranges the light-emitting layers in a blue-green-blue-red pattern. The five-stack version reportedly under development adds a third blue layer, creating a blue-green-blue-red-blue arrangement.

Stacking on another emitting layer spreads the electrical load, which is important at high pixel densities, where each pixel gets smaller, as does the portion of it that actually emits light. Pushing more current through a smaller emitter to keep brightness up is also said to shorten panel life while making image retention more likely.

Apple last year sent requests for information to Samsung Display and LG Display about iMac OLED panel development. The specifications discussed were a 24-inch panel with 600 nits of brightness and 218 pixels per inch. The current 24-inch iMac's LCD manages 500 nits at the same density.

LG Display has already demonstrated a 27-inch 5K panel at 220 PPI with an RGB stripe subpixel layout. Given it uses the four-stack structure, it is likely not destined for an iMac, but The Elec suggests it is a gauge for high-density RGB stripe OLED and whether the company can manufacture it in volume.

The only problem with using five stacks, however, is cost. More emitting layers mean more organic material and a reportedly fiddlier deposition process. At the same time, LG Display has to reach Apple's brightness and lifespan requirements without ruining its yields in the process.

Samsung Display is developing QD-OLED for the same reason. Both suppliers are targeting 2028 to have the first iMac OLED panels developed, but a launch likely won't happen until 2029 at the earliest. Meanwhile, Apple is expected to refresh its current 24-inch LCD-based iMac with a new processor later this year.
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Apple's iPhone 18 Pro will cost nearly 40 percent more to build than its predecessor because of soaring memory prices, according to new data analyzed TrendForce.


The research firm's latest smartphone analysis puts the bill of materials for the 256GB iPhone 18 Pro roughly 38 percent above the equivalent iPhone 17 Pro, and says higher retail prices will be unavoidable as a result.

Memory is said to have accounted for about 10 percent of the 256GB iPhone Pro's total component cost a year ago. TrendForce estimates that figure at roughly 34 percent in the third quarter of 2026, rising past 40 percent in the first half of 2027. Panel and application processor costs, once the two biggest line items, drop to single-digit percentages by that point, given memory has taken up so much of the overall cost.

TrendForce expects Apple to take the same approach it used with recent MacBook launches by giving up part of its gross margin to keep the increase palatable with customers and protect shipment volumes. It also suggests Apple could raise prices on older iPhone models at the same time as the new lineup arrives, thereby spreading the cost recovery across the range.


TrendForce notes that memory prices have climbed five- to sevenfold since the start of 2025, and expects Android vendors in the entry-level and mid-range segments to raise prices more steeply than Apple. That, or they could drop product lines outright.

Apple raised prices across the Mac, iPad, Apple TV, HomePod, and Vision Pro lines in June over concerns about the same memory crunch. The iPhone lineup escaped that round, but it looks increasingly unlikely that it will escape the next one.

Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and its first foldable iPhone "Ultra" next month.
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Apple considered a so-called "white-glove" element for its Apple Upgrade leasing program that would have delivered each new replacement device already loaded with the customer's data, but the idea never made it out of planning, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.


Apple Upgrade launched in the U.S. on July 28, replacing the iPhone Upgrade Program and iPhone Payments. The plan lets customers lease an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch rather than buy one outright or pay in installments. iPhone and Apple Watch leases run 12 or 24 months, while Mac and iPad terms are 24 or 36 months. At the end of a term, customers return the device, pay off the balance and keep it, or trade up to a new lease.

In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman reports that when the concept was first discussed years ago, Apple also weighed the idea of having each year's device arrive at the customer's door ready to use, restored from their iCloud backup before it shipped. The version of Apple Upgrade that was actually launched last month includes nothing of the sort.

Setting up a new iPhone can be a notoriously drawn-out process, and the feature would have removed that step from launch day entirely. Gurman believes however that the privacy optics may have put Apple off the idea.

Gurman says the technical side was never the obstacle. Rather, Apple may have decided the idea of receiving a new iPhone with personal account data pre-installed on it could be unnerving for some customers, provoking questions about how the data was transferred and whether anyone could have accessed it.
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Apple is likely to unveil a new M6 MacBook Pro and refreshed iMacs in October, based on its typical release schedule, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.


Writing in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Gurman reiterated his belief that Apple is readying the launch of a refreshed base-model MacBook Pro with a 14-inch display powered by an M6 chip.

The base model is expected ahead of new high-end MacBook Pro models with OLED displays and M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, which could arrive between the end of this year and early 2027. Gurman reported last month that Apple was testing the laptops with macOS 27.1, which is scheduled for release to consumers at the end of October.

As for iMacs, the new version is likely to be an updated 24-inch model with an M5 chip or M6 chip, replacing the existing M4 model. No major design changes are expected, with Apple also reportedly developing a 24-inch iMac with an OLED display, though that won't arrive for several years.
This article, "New MacBook Pro and Refreshed iMacs Likely Coming in October" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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