White iPhone is misfit for cases

Steve Henn Apr 29, 2011
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White iPhone is misfit for cases

Steve Henn Apr 29, 2011
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Kai Ryssdal: It can fairly be said that there’s almost no news about Apple that’s too small to notice. And by small, I actually mean physically small.

The shiny new white iPhone 4 took 10 months to deliver but it’s now set the tech press ablaze — because, well, it’s white. Right, shocking.

But it’s also two-tenths of a millimeter fatter than the black one. Does size matter? Normally, no, but because it’s Apple, it does. Marketplace’s Steve Henn reports.


Steve Henn: Is a fuller-figured iPhone really such a bad thing? Two-tenths of a millimeter might not matter much to you, but Rene Ritchie at the iPhone Blog says if your business is designing cases for the iPhone 4, it could mean the difference between having a hit on your hands and having a problem — well, kind of.

Rene Ritchie: Some of them are a little bit too tight; they just feel you are just pushing them to get it in there. But they still work.

Industry analyst Jack Plunket says actually, as is the case with almost everything Apple touches, the financial stakes here are high.

Jack Plunket: Definitely a lot of money. When you consider there were roughly 50 million iPhones sold last year worldwide. And personally, I don’t ever recall seeing an iPhone in someone’s hand without a cover on it.

Not everyone in the industry is convinced there will be a big market for white iPhone cases. As our own John Moe of the Marketplace Tech Report said on his blog today, if you are such an attention-seeking diva that you need a white iPhone, you’re probably not going to buy a case anyway.

In Sili Valley, I’m Steve Henn for Marketplace.

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