2026 is shaping up to be a big year for Apple and in its first wave of hardware launches, the brand debuted the first-ever affordable MacBook Neo. With the iPhone Fold also coming this year, Apple is set to step into an entirely new avenue, the 'ultra'-premium segment. Now, it looks like the first product in that category could be the iPhone Ultra, which is what the iPhone Fold may be ultimately called. However, that's not the only ultra product the Cupertino giant may be having up its sleeve.
iPhone Ultra, AirPods Ultra and more reportedly under development
As per veteran Apple analyst Mark Gurman, the first-ever iPhone Fold could be called the iPhone Ultra. In his Power On newsletter, he further explained that this naming decision will fuel a flurry of Ultra-branded products that Apple will launch in 2026, three different products to be precise.
Gurman states that an all-new AirPods Ultra and MacBook Ultra will join the iPhone Ultra. All three will launch by the end of 2026, possibly during its Spring event. While the AirPods Ultra will succeed the AirPods Pro 3, the MacBook Ultra is said to usher in the first wave of touchscreen OLED MacBooks.
This falls in line with a recent AirPods patent that was spotted in the US Patent's office. It showed off a product codenamed B798 built on the idea of adding low-resolution cameras to AirPods to gather data that would be processed by AI, aka, Gemini-powered Siri and Apple Intelligence. This data will reportedly assist users in their workouts and daily activities.
Initial price estimates for these new products are expected to be atleast 20% above the current top-of the line Apple devices. So, the iPhone Ultra will be positioned above the iPhone 18 Pro Max, the MacBook Ultra will sit atop the MacBook Pro M5 Max and M5 Ultra and the AirPods Ultra above the AirPods Pro 3.
This inadvertently unlocks a new super-premium tier of product categories for Apple, offering the latest and greatest innovations from the brand. That said, at the time of writing, Gurman reports that the Ultra MacBook and AirPods might not happen this year. However, they are coming sooner or later. Apple will also launch an iPad Ultra in the future, the first-ever high-end iPad with a foldable OLED display.
