Gene Munster went into Apple's event with the foldable nowhere on his list of things that would matter, and came out of it forecasting more than 20 million units in the first year.
Dan Nathan's arithmetic on the desk said a million of them at $2,500 apiece would be a rounding error against Apple's revenue. Munster's answer was that the buyers are already inside the building, holding Pro Maxes.
"But after seeing it, I'm convinced that this was a really big deal for Apple today."
Munster is a managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management and has been making public calls on Apple products long enough to propose, on air, that he and Nathan settle this one a year from now.
I listened to the full segment so you can skip it.
Here are the 4 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Gene Munster, Managing Partner at Deepwater Asset Management, who has been calling Apple's product cycles publicly for years
🎙️ Host: Melissa Lee, who anchors CNBC's Fast Money
👥 Also on: Dan Nathan, CNBC Fast Money contributor who co-hosts MRKT Call for RiskReversal Media
📰 Published: 9 September 2026 on CNBC
🔴 CNBC | ⏱️ 4 min
Key Takeaways
The foldable was not on Munster's list going into the event, and he left calling it a really big deal
He says foldables have stalled at 2% of the smartphone market because Samsung's and Google's versions were not devices people wanted
Munster's comparison is AirPods, not Vision Pro — the first product since 2016 he thinks people genuinely want
He models it at 8 to 12% of iPhone revenue and 5% of Apple's total
Nathan's counter is that a million units at $2,500 is a rounding error, and the device is too big to interest him
Munster's units come from cannibalizing the Pro Max base, where the price step alone lifts the iPhone business
1. What the Duo Is For
Melissa Lee brought Munster in straight off CNBC's report from Apple Park and asked what hole the foldable fills in the product lineup. His answer was that it does not fill one.
"Fills a hole about where humanity is going, which is this insatiable demand for content," he said, and described the behavior he is really forecasting: "And people get up in the morning. It's the first thing they look at. They touch their phone and look at it 100 plus times a day. It's the last thing they look at before they go to bed."
On why the category has gone nowhere so far: the last five years of Samsung and Google foldables were not devices people wanted, and "It's 2% of the overall smartphone market, so it's not necessarily filling a hole in the product lineup"
He was candid that his own view moved during the event. The foldable was known and expected, and it was not on his list of the big takeaways: "But after seeing it, I'm convinced that this was a really big deal for Apple today"
He framed the whole thing as a comment on people rather than on Apple, calling it an unfortunate reality of how humanity is playing out
2. The First Since AirPods
The comparison Munster reached for was not a phone at all, and it came with a date attached.
"I mean, Vision Pro really didn't hit the mark since basically the AirPods came out in December of 2016," he said — his way of saying this is the first consumer product in a decade that people actually want
The revenue frame followed: "I think it's probably going to account for 5% of, of probably 8 to 12% of iPhone revenue, 5% of overall revenue. This is going to be like the AirPods effectively. And that's really notable."
The point of the AirPods analogy is that it did not need to fill a gap in the lineup to become a business
3. Nathan's Rounding Error
Dan Nathan pushed back with the arithmetic, and did it as a stock question rather than a product one.
His base rate was Apple's last new category: "You talked about Vision Pro. They sold what for 4 or 500,000 of them over a couple of years." He said it was a product a lot of people tried and then got rid of
His math on the foldable: "I look at this and I say to myself, okay, if they were to sell a million of these over the next year, let's say an average price point of 2500 bucks, we're talking about two, $2.5 billion. It's like a rounding error on that number."
His personal read was blunter than his model: the signaling looks amazing and the device looks great, but "I just would not have any interest in this thing for a very long time. It's too big"
The question he actually wanted answered was about the equity: "But I'm just saying from a financial impact, like as someone who's looking at the stock, would this be the sort of thing that would get you excited to go out and buy the stock?"
4. Where the Units Come From
Munster said yes, proposed revisiting the argument for fun in a year, and then showed where his number comes from.
"I think that they'll do 20 plus million of these in the first year," he said
The units are conversions, not additions: "That's about 30% of total iPhone revenue comes from Pro Max. If they take a third of those, just the ASP bump is 54%. So if it fully cannibalizes, you still get a 5% lift on the iPhone business overall."
He said that excludes any upgrades coming from the Pro or the other models, so he treats it as the floor rather than the case
The one thing he flagged against himself is the hardware: he has not held one, and the people he has talked to who have say it is heavy — "That is a negative, but I think the experience is going to be remarkable"
He closed by conceding Nathan's starting position had been his own: "I thought that this was going to be a rounding error, that it's nice, cool tech, but I just come back to, unfortunately, this is what people want"
Bonus Insights
Munster's forecast rests on a behavioral claim rather than a specification — the phone gets looked at more than a hundred times a day, so a bigger screen sells itself
Neither man argued about the price, which is the number the rest of the hour had been about; the disagreement was entirely about units
The bet is on the record with a date: Munster asked Nathan to revisit it a year from now, which is the closest thing to a testable call either of them made
Munster's bottom line is that the foldable does not have to win new customers to matter, because a third of the Pro Max base trading up at a much higher average price does the work on its own — and that after a decade of products people tolerated, this is the first one he thinks they want.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Apple (The iPhone Duo, the Pro Max base Munster expects it to cannibalize, and the two prior new categories he measures it against — AirPods from December 2016 and Vision Pro, which he says did not hit the mark)
Samsung and Google (The foldable makers of the last five years, whose devices Munster says people did not want, which is why the category is stuck at 2% of smartphones)
Deepwater Asset Management (Munster's firm, and the source of the 20 million-unit first-year forecast)
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