Suppose you arrive at New Delhi airport and see two gigantic smartphones battling it out on the terminal. One covers the building, the other climbs up to challenge it. The viral Instagram video of this battle wasn't a real airport campaign. It was a digitally developed FOOH (fake out-of-home) idea, created with visual effects and artificial intelligence. But it seemed plausible, because the Apple–Samsung rivalry has already become a spectacle. The two firms no longer compete only on processors, cameras or screens. They compete with jokes and memes, and by dominating everyone's feeds.

The current round started with Apple's unveiling of the iPhone Duo, the company's first foldable phone, on 9 September 2026. It unfolds into a 7.6-inch screen and starts at $1,999, the cost of a powerful laptop or a holiday. Apple is pitching the Duo as a hybrid of the iPhone's portability and the iPad's productivity. Samsung's reply was that it has been making foldables since 2019.

Samsung Mobile US trolled Apple on X during the launch event, with posts such as "Let us know when you're done reheating our leftovers," according to Khaleej Times. The jokes reminded viewers that Samsung already sells multi-panel foldables while Apple is only starting out in the category. Then Duolingo joined in. Because Apple's phone is named "Duo," like Duolingo's owl mascot, Samsung jokingly expressed solidarity with the language-learning company, saying Apple had copied them both. Some of these posts reportedly drew more than a million impressions.

The jokes make it look as though Apple and Samsung are the only competitors that matter. From a management science point of view, however, Apple may face a more dangerous rival: another Apple product. Both the iPhone Duo and the iPhone 18 Pro are powered by Apple's A20 Pro chip, and both target the upper end of the smartphone market, buyers who want the latest Apple technology. So the question is not just "Will the Duo sell?" It is "Will buyers choose the Duo, another iPhone, or a Samsung?" This raises the problem of product cannibalization: when a company's new product takes sales away from one of its existing products. Put simply, the Duo may end up competing less with Samsung and more with Apple's own iPhone 18 Pro.

Assume Apple sells 5,000,000 iPhone Duos. That sounds like a huge success. But suppose 3 million of those customers would otherwise have bought an iPhone 18 Pro. Only the other 2 million sales are pure new business. Apple cannot look only at the profit the Duo makes. It must also account for the profit it loses when customers choose the Duo instead of another iPhone.

Net gain from the Duo = profit from Duo sales − profit lost from fewer sales of other iPhones

Cannibalization isn't always bad. If consumers are serious about moving from traditional phones to foldables, Apple would rather they upgrade from an iPhone Pro to a Duo than switch to a Samsung. Businesses sometimes need to undercut their own products before competitors do. But strong sales alone don't prove the Duo is a success. The real question is what those customers would have bought if the Duo didn't exist. This is where choice modelling helps: Apple has to estimate whether customers would buy the Duo, buy an iPhone 18 Pro, move to a Samsung foldable, or treat $1,999 as too much and buy nothing.

These decisions can be studied using customer surveys, sales history, trade-in data, online behaviour and pricing experiments. Conjoint analysis breaks a product into attributes such as price, screen size, camera quality, durability, operating system and brand, helping a business see which mix of features really drives preference. Are customers interested in the Duo because it folds, or simply because of the Apple logo? Can it replace a small tablet? Or do they want it because it is new, expensive and likely to attract attention?

Apple's ecosystem also shapes the decision. If you already own a MacBook, Apple Watch or AirPods, upgrading to another iPhone is easier than switching to Samsung. Photos, messages and files stay in sync, and AirDrop and iCloud make data easy to transfer. Giving up that convenience is a cost, known in management science as a switching cost. Some customers may choose the Duo not only for the fold, but because it lets them stay inside the Apple ecosystem.

A lower price would probably attract more buyers, but what matters is what those buyers would have purchased instead. If they would have bought a Samsung, Apple gains market share. If they would have chosen the iPhone 18 Pro, Apple may just be moving revenue from one of its own devices to another.

The Duo also sits next to the iPhone 18 Pro, which starts at $1,199, an $800 gap. That split lets Apple serve mainstream premium buyers with the Pro, and early adopters willing to pay the most with the Duo. The Duo might even make the Pro seem cheap: after seeing a $1,999 phone, a $1,199 phone feels reasonable. This is the anchoring effect, in which consumers judge one price relative to another. A customer can walk out feeling they saved $800 by buying the Pro, and Apple still collects $1,199. There is a paradox, though. If Apple prices the Duo very high to protect the Pro, it can hurt the Duo's success. If it lowers the price to win more customers, it increases cannibalization. The most profitable price is not necessarily the one that sells the most Duos. This is where portfolio optimisation comes in: Apple isn't trying to sell as many Duos as possible, but to find the mix of products, prices and production volumes that gives the best overall result across all iPhones.

Samsung's mockery also deserves a critical look. Samsung is right that it entered foldables much earlier, but arriving first doesn't guarantee owning a category forever. Counterpoint Research projects that Apple could capture about a quarter of the foldable market in 2026. Samsung's puns are therefore not just innocent jokes. They are defensive marketing, reminding consumers that Samsung was first.

TrendForce offers another perspective. It projects that Apple could ship about five million Duo devices in 2026 and take a 24.8% share of the global foldable market, while overall foldable shipments stay roughly flat this year. In other words, Apple may be taking market share from existing foldable makers rather than expanding the foldable market itself.

Sources

  • Apple, "Apple unveils iPhone Duo" — apple.com
  • Reuters, report on the iPhone Duo unveiling — x.com
  • Khaleej Times, "'Reheating our leftovers': Samsung, Duolingo take swipe at Apple over iPhone Duo reveal" — khaleejtimes.com
  • TrendForce, "iPhone Duo Expected to Capture Nearly 25% of Foldable Smartphone Market in 2026" — trendforce.com
  • Counterpoint Research projection on Apple's foldable share, as reported by MarketScreener — marketscreener.com