Duo apps are coming to Apple’s foldable, TechCrunch reports milestone

More apps reach the store

Apple announced Friday that over 100,000 apps designed for the iPhone Duo are live in the App Store. It said thousands more are being added each day. The announcement coincided with more than a dozen new Duo-ready apps. They include Microsoft Word and Outlook, Zoom, NBA and NHL sports apps, Etsy, LTK, Goodnotes, Extra and Halide Mark III. These join apps such as Netflix, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Apple also listed updates for many other apps, including Spotify, Excel, PowerPoint, ChatGPT, Canva, Tinder, Strava and The Washington Post. The company expects the updates to appear soon, though Spotify still showed a black bar on the side in the review unit, and its App Store page did not show an available update.

Why screen support matters

Apps that are not optimized for the Duo can leave a black bar along the screen’s side, using space. In some cases, important functions are tucked into an overflow menu.

Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations, said developers had embraced the device quickly and praised their creativity. She added that Apple was encouraged by the pace of updates.

Demand brings delivery delays

The Duo starts at $1,999 for the 256GB model. Orders sold out within hours of opening, and estimated shipping times have moved into next year. On its earnings call this week, Apple said it was “hard to predict” when the supply constraints causing delays would ease. The growing number of optimized apps is arriving as buyers face those longer waits.