The Potential of Apple’s Foldable iPhone Ultra

The “Ultra” moniker has become a favorite among Apple prognosticators over the past few months, both for Apple’s long-rumored foldable iPhone and the OLED touchscreen MacBook that’s supposedly in the works.

“iPhone Ultra” began replacing “iPhone Fold” as the placeholder name for the foldable earlier this year, and while that started with supply chain leakers, it was seemingly validated in April, when Macworld reported it had “received information that corroborates reports that Apple will instead opt for the ‘Ultra’ brand for its new iPhone model.”

That report cited only a single source, so there’s no reason to believe the information it received was accurate, especially since that same source suggested the touchscreen MacBook would be dubbed the “MacBook Ultra.”

While it’s impossible to rule anything out, both names are a bit implausible. “iPhone Ultra” would be borrowing a suffix that’s long been held by Samsung’s equivalent of the iPhone Pro Max, and recently expanded to its own Galaxy Z Fold 8. It’s really hard to imagine Apple using a name that’s so derivative. It’s the same reason “iPhone Fold” was always a long-shot too; nobody ever really expected Apple to use that name, but it was as good a placeholder as anything for a foldable iPhone. By contrast, we’ve been hearing the name “iPhone Ultra” since at least 2023. Back then, the consensus was that Apple was either going to rebrand the iPhone Pro Max or release an even higher-end fifth model.

A MacBook Ultra would be an even stranger choice, considering that Apple has a chip by the same name. Unless Apple plans for its highest-end MacBook to be powered by a next-gen M7 Ultra chip, it would be a bit confusing to mix the names. The MacBook Ultra gets an M7 Max, but if you want the Ultra chip you have to buy the Mac Studio.

Apple has done confusing things with its branding in the past — Apple TV is now the name of a service, an app, and a set-top box — but it’s generally more careful about its flagship products.

If anything, there’s a very good chance the new touchscreen MacBook will simply be the next-generation of MacBook Pro, with the touchscreen likely limited to the higher-end models, much like we saw with the Touch Bar ten years ago.

Nevertheless, “iPhone Ultra” and “MacBook Ultra” have become the placeholders many folks are now using in advance of Apple’s actual product releases, which is fair. While regular iDrop News readers will notice that we’ve tried to avoid implying there’s a settled name for either of these products (because there isn’t), folks have to call them something, and “iPhone Ultra” rolls off the tongue a lot more easily than “foldable iPhone.”

That’s probably why Apple employees are also said to be using the name internally. Earlier this week, analyst Max Weinbach expressed some more reasons to be skeptical of the name, suggesting that it would be odd for an iPhone that will be “lesser than” the Pro to be considered an “Apple Ultra-product.” After all, about the only thing “Ultra” about the new iPhone is likely to be its eye-watering price tag.

In response, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman chimed in to say that everyone inside Apple is calling it the Ultra, adding “We’ll see what happens.”

There are several ways to read Gurman’s comment, but it’s notable that he’s also generally avoided settling on a name in any of his Bloomberg coverage, sticking to “the foldable iPhone” whenever it’s mentioned.

However, the most important thing to remember is that just because Apple employees are using the term doesn’t mean it will be the final product name. Apple’s marketing names are some of its most closely guarded secrets, and leaks of those are extremely rare, especially months in advance.

The iPhone 16e was perhaps the exception that proved the rule, with supply chain sources pointing to that instead of the more commonly believed “iPhone SE (4th generation)” name. Still, even that only popped up a few weeks before Apple unveiled the first of its new e-series models. Meanwhile, while multiple rumors pegged Apple’s ultra-slim iPhone as the “iPhone Air,” that was mostly educated speculation — and even then, Apple surprised us by omitting the number.

By contrast, everyone was almost blindsided by the MacBook Neo in March. Despite almost a year of rumors that Apple was working on a budget MacBook, the conventional wisdom was that it would merely omit the suffix, much like the iPad. The name did leak out the day before the event, but that was entirely a gaffe on Apple’s part. Nobody in the rumor mill had even speculated on the name before that.

While it wasn’t quite as much of a bluebird, the “iPhone X” was another one of those guesses that turned out to be prescient, but it was far from certain. By early September of 2017, I’d received boxes of advance cases for review that either got the names completely wrong (“iPhone 7s” and “iPhone 8”) or avoided it altogether by specifying screen sizes (“4.7-inch iPhone” and “5.8-inch iPhone”).

The secretive nature of Apple makes it likely that only a handful of people at Apple Park know what the foldable iPhone will actually be called — and they’re not talking.