Apple was far from the first company to announce a passport-shaped folding phone this year, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t copied. As my colleague Dom Preston already explained, it’s almost impossible to keep product development secret when Apple and its competitors all share the same global suppliers.
Apple’s new CEO John Ternus and head of marketing Greg ‘Joz’ Joswiak addressed the topic during an interview with TechRadar’s Lance Ulanoff and Mark Spoonauer of Tom’s Guide.
“People knew through leaks that we were working on a foldable,” said Joz. “Unfortunately, they got the aspect ratio, and a lot of coincidental instances of people finding that an interesting aspect ratio.” By “people,” Joz means Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi who all announced wide foldables ahead of Apple.
What did remain a secret is the folding nano-texture display unique to the iPhone Duo. “What I’m super proud of — we kept it secret,” said Joz. “We put the extra security on it. We didn’t talk about it to anybody.”
The whole interview is worth a watch. Ternus’ boyish enthusiasm is a refreshing change from the more measured Tim Cook, signaling his roots as a hands-on engineer. You can see it when describing his first interaction with a prototype of the display. “Oh this is it, this is what I want,” he said, eagerly grinning.
The new head of Apple is clearly a product guy, just like its mercurial founder.