According to the latest report from the folks at Chinese blog MIC Gadget, the purported iPhone 5 cases are now “everywhere” in China.
They have posted a number of pictures of these cases in various colours. These cases are very similar, if not the same, to the purported iPhone 5 cases we published few days back.
So this doesn’t really give us any new information about Apple’s next generation other than what we’ve heard before, which is, it will be thinner, longer and wider. It however tells us that Chinese manufacturers are so sure of the new iPhone with a larger screen that they have already started producing cases based on this design.
As MacRumors points out, making these cases available on launch date can mean huge revenues for manufacturers, but at the same time they have to be very sure about the accuracy and the source of the design. They are already distributing these cases according to MIC Gadget, which says:
“What we are hearing now is that the Chinese case makers are distributing their iPhone 5 cases. Anyone dares to take direct order from them? Distribution price starts from 2 yuan (about $0.30), and you need to buy at least 500 of them!”
In the past a lot of Apple products including the iPad 2 have been the victim of case leaks. Chinese courts had in fact sentenced three Foxconn employees to prison for leaking case designs of the iPad 2.
One thing to be thought about is, how will Apple address fragmentation issues if the iPhone 5 does include a larger screen. Would it again tell developers to optimise their apps for the iPhone 5 like it did with the Retina Display? Or would it tweak the pixel density of the screen so as to make images and graphics appear normally without any special efforts from the developers’ side?
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
[MIC Gadget via MacRumors]
Source: Purported iPhone 5 Cases Are Everywhere In China
