Executive Editor, Macworld

Summary created by Smart Answers AI

• Macworld reports that Apple may scrap its rumored all-glass iPhone, originally planned to mark the device’s 20th anniversary.
• The project, which featured an ambitious Liquid Glass design with a quad-curved display, appears to have been cancelled due to high production costs and low manufacturing yields.
• Analyst Edison Lee suggests rising memory costs were a key factor, and Apple’s stock dropped following the news.

In just a few weeks, Apple will unveil its latest iPhones, including the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, and the iPhone Ultra, its first folding phone. However, reports had claimed for months that Apple is planning something even bigger for next year to mark the iPhone’s 20th anniversary. Now, a new report throws a bucket of cold water on those plans.

According to Jefferies analyst Edison Lee, Apple’s has scrapped its plans for the 20th anniversary phone, which has been rumored to have a “quad-curved” display. Reports have described a phone as having “a display where the bezel nearly disappears from sight, while edge viewing remains natural and undisturbed” that adopts Apple’s Liquid Glass branding in hardware form.

However, now Lee says the phone might never arrive. Citing “supply chain checks” and “soaring memory costs,” the analyst says Apple’s plans for “all-glass features” on future iPhones have been canceled “due to low yield” or not enough return on investment. Presumably, the phone would have cost too much to produce.

In response, he downgraded Apple’s rating to Underperform (Sell) on the basis that the move is “a major setback to efforts to bring in higher-priced iPhones.” AAPL dropped more than 2 percent on the advice.

We’ve been getting regular reports about the so-called 20th anniversary iPhone for more than a year, as Apple gears up to mark the milestone with a special-edition model, much as it did with the iPhone X in 2017.