Apple has plans to make a folding iPhone starting next year, reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said on Wednesday.

Kuo said Apple’s folding phone could have a display made by Samsung Display, which is planning to produce as many as eight million foldable panels for the device next year. However, other components haven’t been finalized, including the device’s hinge, Kuo wrote. He expects it to have “premium pricing.”

Kuo is an analyst for TF International Securities, and focuses on the Asian electronics supply chain and often discusses Apple products before they’re launched.

He wrote in a post on social media site X that Apple’s plans for the foldable iPhone aren’t locked in yet and are subject to change. Apple did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Apple’s iPhone makes up over half of Apple’s business and remains an incredibly profitable product, accounting for $201 billion in sales in the company’s fiscal 2024. But iPhone revenue peaked in 2022, and Apple is constantly looking for ways to attract new customers and convince its current customers to upgrade to more expensive devices.

Several of Apple’s rivals, including Huawei and Samsung, have been releasing folding smartphones since 2019.

The devices promise the screen size of a tablet in a format that can be stored in pants pockets. But folding phones still have hardware issues, including creases in the display where it is folded.

Folding phones also have yet to prove they drive significant demand after the novelty wears off.

Research firm TrendForce said last year that only 1.5% of all smartphones sold can fold. Counterpoint, another research firm tracking smartphone sales, said earlier this year that the folding market only grew about 3% in 2024 and is expected to shrink in 2025.

Nintendo shares hit a fresh record high on Wednesday, continuing this year’s massive rally that has been fueled by hype around the company’s newly released Switch 2 console.

Shares of the Japanese gaming giant have jumped 46% this year, adding roughly $39 billion to the stock’s value, according to a CNBC calculation of data from S&P Capital IQ.

The Switch 2 is the successor of the original Switch console, which was released in 2017. Nintendo unveiled details of the Switch 2 in January, and the device went on sale this month, leading to shortages of the console in some markets and even to stores operating special opening hours.

Nintendo this month said it sold 3.5 million units of the Switch 2 in the four days following its launch. The company has previously forecast sales of 15 million units in its fiscal year ending March 2026, though many analysts say that is a modest estimate and expect Nintendo to achieve higher numbers.

Nintendo’s original Switch is its second-most successful console in history, selling over 152 million units since its launch to the quarter ended March this year. Its appeal lies in its hybrid nature — users can play the console on a TV, but can also detach it to use it on the go.

Investors are hoping the Switch 2 will replicate the success of its predecessor.

Nintendo has boosted the the success of its consoles through games involving strong franchises with characters and brands like Super Mario, Zelda and Pokemon. And the company has used its recognizable intellectual property and licensed it to movies and theme parks, boosting the success of its core video game product.

For Nintendo investors, that strategy has paid off. Since March 2017, when the original Switch was released, Nintendo shares have surged nearly 470%, according to S&P Capital IQ data. More than $81 billion has been added to the company’s market capitalization over that period.

Meta Platforms tried to poach OpenAI employees by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million, with even larger annual compensation packages, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said.

While Meta had sought to hire “a lot of people” from OpenAI, “so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,” Altman said, speaking on the “Uncapped” podcast, which is hosted by his brother.

“I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” he said. “Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.”

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The Meta CEO is personally trying to assemble a top artificial intelligence team for its “superintelligence” AI lab and has invested heavily in AI through its Meta AI research division, which also oversees its Llama series of open-source large language models.

The moves come after Meta had once again delayed the release of its latest flagship AI model due to concerns about its capabilities, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, sources have previously told CNBC that Zuckerberg has become so frustrated with Meta’s standing in AI that he’s willing to invest billions in top talent. 

Last week Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, announced he was leaving for Meta as part of a deal that saw the Facebook parent dish out $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in the AI startup. Wang added that a small number of Scale AI employees would also join Meta as part of the agreement. 

The Times had previously reported that Wang would head a research lab pursuing “superintelligence,” an AI system that surpasses human intelligence.

The company has also recently poached other top talent, including Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google’s AI research laboratory DeepMind, according to a report from Bloomberg. The report added that Zuckerberg had been directly involved with the recruitment efforts. 

Speaking on the podcast, which was released on Tuesday, Altman said that Meta’s strategy of offering a large, upfront, guaranteed compensation would detract from the actual work and not set up a winning culture.

“I think that there’s a lot of people, and Meta will be a new one, that are saying ‘we’re just going to try to copy OpenAI,'” he added. “That basically never works. You’re always going to where your competitor was, and you don’t build up a culture of learning what it’s like to innovate.”

However, spending big on startups and their talent is nothing new to the AI space. Former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive joined OpenAI after the company acquired Ive’s AI devices startup io through a $6.4 billion all-equity deal last month.

Some tech analysts have also pushed back against the notion that Meta has been missing the mark on AI.

“They basically built the rails for open source AI development, and so much of what is happening in AI is being built on Meta,” Daniel Newman, CEO at Futurum Group, told CNBC’s “Power Lunch” last week. 

Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution. Llama’s open-source characteristics have allowed many third-party applications to be built on top of it.  

Newman added that Meta’s massive investments, such as in ScaleAI, will continue to push it forward in training its behemoth models.