Apple's foldable MacBook might not be as big as we first thought, display analyst says

Apple has long been rumored to be working on its first foldable device, but it won't be a phone or a tablet as other companies have brought to the market. Instead, it'll be a foldable laptop. We'd been told to expect that Apple would sell the laptop with a large 20.25-inch foldable display but now a new report suggests that Apple will instead shrink that display to 18.76 inches.

A recent report by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple was working on testing both sizes of display which could have suggested that both would reach the market. However, in a paywalled X post that was picked up by 9to5Mac, display analyst Ross Young says that Apple has ditched the 20.25-inch display plans in favor of one that's smaller at 18.76 inches.

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Young has a strong track record of detailing Apple's plans based on information gleaned from within the display supply chain and he believes that Apple has now settled on the smaller 18.76 display or, more likely, a rounded figure of 18.8 inches.

It's thought that such a foldable display would give users a laptop of around the same size as the 13-inch MacBook Air or slightly smaller than the 14-inch MacBook Pro. The larger 20.25-inch model would have been more akin to a 15-inch MacBook Air instead.

Kuo's report suggested that Apple intends to be able to launch the foldable MacBook in 2026 and that it will be powered by an M5 chip. Apple only just announce the M4 as part of the OLED iPad Pro unveiling and that chip won't debut in Macs until later this year.