What I expect the iPhone lineup to look like in a few years
I recently wrote a member's post about how I don't think the iPhone Air is a good comp to the iPhone X. One response I got a few times for this was that the iPhone Air is actually more like the MacBook Air, which was a major compromise in its first version, but was iterated on and ultimately became the best-selling laptop in the world. As tech advanced, what started as a niche device with major compromises turned into the most mainstream thing possible.
My gut is that this comparison is largely correct, and it may be even more prescient than we realize. See, when the MacBook Air was released in early 2008, it was a third laptop in the Mac lineup, which was:
- MacBook
- MacBook Air
- MacBook Pro
Compare that to the new iPhone releases in late 2025:
- iPhone
- iPhone Air
- iPhone Pro
Huh, interesting.
Back on episode 32 of Comfort Zone, I predicted that the thin iPhone was just going to be the new normal iPhone, and right now I think that prediction was early, not fundamentally wrong. It took Apple 3 more years to stop making the normal MacBook and reduced their lineup to just the Air and Pro, and I don't think it would be crazy to think that something similar will happen here. Given that, I think we could be looking at an iPhone lineup like this around 2028:
- iPhone Air
- iPhone Pro
- iPhone Fold
Maybe the folding iPhone isn't coming, but there sure seems to be a lot of smoke around that recently.
Maybe I'm being suckered into making a comparison that doesn't make sense for phones, but the more I think about it, the more sense I think it makes. I don't think the iPhone Air makes a ton of sense as a practical purchase today, but I don't doubt that Apple will be able to make this phone a great choice for most people in the coming years.
One thing I can't help but wonder is about pricing. Does the Air come down to $799 starting like today's normal iPhone, or does it hold the $999 price and it just becomes the new normal? The latter seems more likely to me, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
