Make IPhone Changes With Case Makers Scramble

A slight change in the design of the Verizon iPhone has case makers scrambling to update their products in an already brutal market with short product cycles.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple shifted the mute switch and volume buttons on the Verizon iPhone a few millimeters from their original position on the AT&T version -- forcing case makers to make adjustments and scramble to roll out existing products.
Verizon's iPhone release highlights the unique challenges facing case makers. Protective sheaths made of plastic and silicone are so precisely designed that they often need to be reconfigured for even the slightest changes, adding additional pressures to an ancillary market where product cycles are tight and the competition is brutal.
The cost of making cases is similar across categories, as varied as toy cars to industrial parts to phones. But the business requires keeping pace with the relentless roll out of products in the mobile phone industry. This need, to keep up, drives up costs for manufacturers. And since new phones are rolled out at a furious pace, they have a limited window of opportunity to turn a profit.
Apple, in particular, has rolled out a new version of the iPhone roughly every 12 months since its introduction in 2007, which gives case makers less than a year to sell the bulk of their inventories. Due to the tight product cycle, case makers miss the first couple of months after a product launch, and see sales slow as the models are replaced by successors.
Android phones are an even riskier investment, because of their greater variety and shorter product cycles.
The range of devices is complicated by the fact that most makers don't release the precise specifications of new devices until their release, so case makers are often reluctant to start production until they see the final product, in case last-minute design changes need to be made. Verizon released the iPhone in stores today.
But the payoff can be big. In the first nine months of last year, $497 million worth of mobile phone accessories were sold in the U.S., according to market research firm NPD. Sales of cases, in particular, surged 28 percent from a year earlier, indicating that consumers will keep demanding more accessories to go with their devices.