With only six days left in 2023, the prospect of a folding iPhone, once seen as a distinct possibility, appearing this year is now nonexistent. But what about a theoretical iPhone Flip announcement in 2024?

Sadly, it doesn't seem very likely. It has long been said that Apple's first foldable phone could appear next year, but one analyst who initially favored a 2024 launch has since revised his prediction.

"I had predicted in a report last year that Apple would launch a foldable iPhone as early as 2024, but it is now clear that this prediction needs to be revised," Ming-Chi Kuo wrote. It could be a foldable iPad or an iPad/iPhone hybrid."

We first saw this timing update back in April, but have not been given much else since then. The words "possibly" and "as soon as possible" don't sound very optimistic, and others even less so.

Meanwhile, leaker Revengnus predicts that "Apple's first foldable product" will not appear until 2027 and may not be the iPhone Flip. They suggest that a foldable MacBook, not an iPhone, will appear in the X post.

There is another reason to doubt Apple's chances of releasing an iPhone Flip in 2024. Given the teething problems Samsung had when it released the first Galaxy Fold in 2018, testing it in a smaller market would probably be a wise choice.

As long as a foldable iPad is not on the horizon, it is reasonable to assume that the iPhone Flip is further along - assuming, as Kuo implies, that Apple's idea of a foldable is not an iPhone/iPad hybrid device. If.

But even if it is, recent reports suggest that Apple is putting the foldable tablet on the back burner while it works on the transition to OLED. According to Nikkei Asia, there is no "concrete timeline" for tablet development at this time.

Do these things mean that Apple will never release the iPhone Flip next year? Apple is notoriously secretive, and given the vast number of foldable patents the company holds, it seems certain that it is playing with various top-secret prototypes in Cupertino.