All-glass iPhone reportedly canceled. Apple's main boast was supposed to attract a huge mass of customers

The all-glass iPhone was one of Apple’s most frequently discussed plans for the coming years – it was meant to be a device with which the company would celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its most important series. However, according to the analytical company Jefferies, the project has been abandoned. Due to this, the bank simultaneously downgraded its rating for Apple shares from “hold” to “underperform”, the lowest of commonly used recommendations, and lowered the target price from $285 to just under $264.

A price anchor is missing

The cancellation is not just a matter of a thwarted design. According to Jefferies, the all-glass model was supposed to act as a driver for the entire shift of customers towards the more expensive Pro and Pro Max variants, on which Apple earns the most. Without it, analysts lowered their estimate for the growth rate of the average selling price of iPhones between 2026 and 2031 from 9 to 6.1 percent annually. In other words: the strategy based on people gradually getting used to paying more has developed a crack.

A foldable for two thousand dollars

The only lever Apple has left, according to the bank, is the upcoming foldable iPhone. However, even that will be more expensive than anticipated – Jefferies estimates a starting price of $2,099, with the 2TB storage version costing up to $3,099. At such sums, it will hardly be a mass-market product; the bank expects sales of approximately 14 million units in fiscal year 2028, which is a marginal number on Apple’s scale.

Expensive memory is behind it all

The key culprit is the rising prices of RAM, which are currently complicating life for the entire industry. Jefferies found that an increase to 16 GB RAM will exclusively go to the iPhone 19 Pro Max, which they believe signals that the development of Apple Intelligence features has not progressed much. And if memory prices continue to rise, Apple may reportedly scrap this step entirely – every additional 4 GB today increases manufacturing costs by approximately $60 to $70. It should be added that these are analyst estimates, not official information: Apple fundamentally does not comment on its plans, and bank estimates have been wrong more than once in the past.

Would you be disappointed by the cancellation of the all-glass iPhone, or is it a design gimmick without practical benefit?

Source: Notebookcheck, Investing.com