With the arrival of
the
iPhone on June 29 comes an assault of third-party accessor
ies from screen wipes to cases to skins to adaptors - everything you can think
of. If you thought the volume of iPod accessories was becoming ridiculous, wait
until the iPhone stuff gets here.
Already, major companies are readying their stocks in anticipation of the relea
se, not to mention the fly-by-night Asian manufactures (which we wrote about ea
rlier
here<
/a> and here). It's an attractive, irresistible market for them, since App
le projects sales of 10 million units by the end of the year (an initial 3 mill
ion on release). It's anybody's guess in 2008, when it gets released in Asia an
d other markets. And since the iPhone at its core is essentially an iPod as wel
l, a lot of the existing iPod accessories get a chance at a sales renaissance w
ith a bit of creative repackaging.
Companies like
Marware, Griffin, Radtech, Belkin and a host of
others immediately began working on their products after the announcement of t
he iPhone in January, even if they had next to no information on it other than
the crumbs Jobs threw out at the
Macworld Keynote. I can imagi
ne their collective anxiety at bringing out items that may or may not actually
be on target. (Rest assured that when they get their hands on actual units you
can expect a second wave of more specific and useful items.)
Speculative moves like t
hese often border on the ridiculous, and you can't help but be amused at the ef
fort some of the companies put into these imaginative products. A good example
is
Boxwave's hopefully optimistic
Apple iPhon
e Accessories Page ("Award winning accessories for the iPhone."), which inc
ludes cradles, mounts, chargers, sync cables, skins, leather cases and sleeves,
screen protectors, car and battery adapters. You'd think they knew something w
e didn't.
