Apple's iPhone 18 and Foldable Launch Overshadowed by Rival Trolling and Online Mockery

Reuters reported that the brand had no defined audience for their new product, which is a notable news as Apple is known to have a defined targeted audience for each product line.

“Apple doesn't usually define who the buyer is, but in this case specifically, they really shied away from it,” said Carolina Milanesi, an ​analyst at Creative Strategies.

However, the Analyst doesn't expect that ambiguity to hurt the Duo out of the gate. The brands positioning in the market are expected to drive the strong initial sale of the product, but over time, its target buyer could confine to a ‘niche of wealthy early adopter’.Apple's iPhone 18 launch was supposed to be the story of the week, a new CEO's first keynote, a first-ever foldable, and a redesigned lineup year in the making. Instead, the internet handed the spotlight to everyone but Apple.

Within minutes of the event ending, rival brands piled on with even the back-and-forth between the electronics giant and a language app with seemingly nothing in common, but quickly went viral, pulling in far more engagement than Apple's own launch posts.

Competing phone brands wasted no time in joining the trend. On X, one rival brand shared a post tracing its own foldable lineage, a classic pink flip phone and running through its current line of Fold devices. The caption was a jab at Apple: "Some are just discovering it. We've been making it even better. Just wait for our next move."

The post framed Apple's first foldable as old news dressed up as innovation, positioning the rival brand as the true foldable pioneer that had been refining the category for years while Apple was only now catching up.

The trolls amused plenty of onlookers, some of whom suspected the whole thing might not even be a coincidence. One widely shared comment joked that "the same underpaid third-party intern runs both of these accounts," poking fun at how coordinated the Samsung-Duolingo banter felt.

While the new CEO proudly launched the split screen feature on the iPhone series, Samsung users on X showed the multiple split screen feature on Samsung Fold that let them chat, watch a video while playing games. Some even captioned it, “iPhone could never”

As Apple unveiled the iPhone 18 lineup this week, a new set of online mockery quickly zeroed in on one detail: the colour palette. With Cosmic Orange, the breakout shade of the iPhone 17 Pro, reportedly being phased out in favour of a new finish, users took to social media to argue that the "upgrade" can be achieved by applying a simple coloured sticker over their existing iPhone 17 to mimic the new iPhone 18 model's look.

Reuters reported that the brand had no defined audience for their new product, which is a notable news as Apple is known to have a defined targeted audience for each product line.

“Apple doesn't usually define who the buyer is, but in this case specifically, they really shied away from it,” said Carolina Milanesi, an ​analyst at Creative Strategies.

However, the Analyst doesn't expect that ambiguity to hurt the Duo out of the gate. The brands positioning in the market are expected to drive the strong initial sale of the product, but over time, its target buyer could confine to a ‘niche of wealthy early adopter’.

Apple's iPhone 18 and iPhone Duo had dominated tech headlines for all the reasons the company didn't plan for. For a launch meant to mark a new era under Apple's new CEO, the loudest reactions came from everywhere except the keynote stage itself.