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Sounds like a nice piece of hardware, though the question with folding displays is how they perform after a year or two's use. However, I didn't get a clear idea of why I might want to fold my phone.
My dishwasher is WiFi-enabled, which is jolly clever, but it prompts the same question of why you would want a WiFi-enabled dishwasher.

The things we do with our phones are pushing the need for a bigger display and reducing the usability of previous smaller phones. However, the current phones are bigger and heavier than ideal for many people. Logically, the only dimension you can reduce to solve this dilemma is the thickness.

So a slim iPhone with a "standard" display size but less weight could well be popular. A better fit for those back pockets and (tailored) jacket pockets and less burden in handbags, rucksacks and other pockets. Battery life may not be such a big issue: current phones have generous capacity for medium-use owners so I could see something with, say, two-thirds of their capacity lasting all of most days for a lot of users. Opportunist charging during the day is also getting easier with the spread of inductive chargers (eg in my wife's car).

I can see a market for a slim phone in a way that I can't for a folding one.

At least we won't have to worry about the weight. To complement its "extremely high-tech display", and following on from recent Pros' use of titanium frames, the iFold is to use a new light-weight alloy of Unobtainium that actually has negative mass. You heard it here first.

teaearlegreyhot said:

I wonder how the decision will translate to tourist or business travelers to the UK carrying iPhones?  That is, assuming the UK continues to admit travelers from the US.

Let’s not invent new stuff here, the issue is clear and limited to “UK” users. Given that Apple did it this way, it isn’t going to impact foreign visitors to the UK, nor is data belonging even to UK users going to suddenly decrypt itself. 

AppleZulu said:

The only one of these that makes any sense is a foldable iPad. 

A MacBook with a continuation of its display in the place where the keyboard used to be? Isn't that a MacBook without one of its big advantages, being a keyboard. That's a (big) foldable iPad like AppleZulu said.

A foldable iPhone? Well, that needs the same volume as a non-foldable plus some more for the folding mechanism so it's going to come down to nasty tradeoffs: a lot thicker when folded or less functions (cameras?) or less battery. Doesn't sound a great benefit to me on something that's going to be just that little bit more awkward/slower to use.

In the pre-smart phone age there were flip phones and choccy bar phones. There were many more of the latter, presumably following similar arguments.