iPhone 4G could shake up accessories market

The third party hardware accessory market for the iPhone hasn’t been nearly as groundbreaking as some of us who’ve been observing from day one might have hoped. While there are plenty of accessories that are innovative in terms of how they approach their concept, there have been precious few innovative new concepts. In fact most of the iPhone accessories on the market are either new takes on ideas that have existed since the iPod era (cases, stereos, car connectors), or cellphone-oriented products like bluetooth headsets that have been around for longer than the iPhone has. The most “innovative” concepts we’ve seen so far for the iPhone have come in the form of external battery products, and they do nothing more than fix the iPhone’s primary fundamental shortcoming.

Perhaps anything more than that was too much to ask. While iPhone users have spent the past four years figuring out that the device is much more than just the sum of its iPod and cellphone parts, it’s perhaps made sense that the accessory market has thus far viewed is a mere combination of the two. But one oft-overlooked aspect of iPhone accessory development is the fact that by the time most iPod accessory makers had gotten around to adapting their (electronically connected) accessory ideas to the iPhone, working around various hindrances like cellular interference on stereos and additional controls for earbuds – not to mention that whole failed initial crop of closed-face iPhone cases that almost no one ended up wanting to use with their new touchscreen device – that it wasn’t until the second generation iPhone (the 3G) that we even began to see a truly wide selection of even “basic” iPhone accessories hit the market. And because the third generation iPhone (the 3GS) turned out to be the exact same physical device as its predecessor from a physical exterior standpoint, there was no need for the 3G accessories to be revamped. In other words, as improbable as it seems in 2010 as we prepare to move into the fourth generation iPhone era, many iPhone hardware accessories are still on their first major iteration.

Because the iPhone 4G (or whatever Apple ends up calling it) is likely to have a different shaped physical exterior at the least, it’ll send some of these companies back to the drawing board. And if a form fitting accessory has to be physically redesigned anyway, then perhaps the vendors will use it as an opportunity to go ahead and roll out the new ideas they’ve been sitting on all this time. It’s unlikely that any third party accessory maker will have their hands on a real iPhone 4G prototype in advance (only a fool would invest money based on assumptions about that prototype found in a bar), so don’t expect to see a tidal wave of innovative new iPhone 4G accessories flooding the market when the device itself ships this summer. But before 2010 is over, we just might see some innovative new concepts in iPhone accessories for what some users might grudgingly say is the first time in the device’s history.

iPad accessories slow in coming to market

Search around Beatweek.com and you’ll find reviews of any number of iPad cases, bags, and sleeves, along with announcements about plenty more that are on their way to market. And that’s all well and good, as carrying and protecting the device is quite often the first thing that new iPad users think of when their minds turns to third party accessories. And Apple itself has offered up a few basics such as a keyboard and dock. But where are the rest of the iPad accessories?

Other than iPad earbuds, which have the benefit of being the exact same earbuds you’d use with Apple’s other iDevices and thus already existed even before the iPad was announced, there’s been a startling lack of other kinds of iPad related hardware products come to market thus far for the device which was announced three months ago this week. Some of that undoubtedly has to do with the fact that none of the existing iPhone/iPod accessory makers could get their hands on an iPad test unit in advance, meaning they’re behind the curve, as they haven’t had any more hands on time with the iPad than the rest of us have. But that having been said, three weeks after the device began shipping, we’ve seen that it’s apparently going to be a mainstream success, and yet the lack of announcements of even vague plans for upcoming iPad accessories (beyond yet more cases, bags, sleeves, chargers, screen film, and other non-innovative) is almost startling.

It’s not difficult to imagine a dockable stereo system designed to seat an iPad instead of an iPhone; in fact the iPad’s larger size may relieve some of the pressure to miniaturize the system often faced when creating accessories for the smaller iPhone. Nor is it hard to picture mounting your iPad to the front face of your dashboard to run an App Store GPS app in all its ten inch glory; surely, glancing at a GPS device while driving would be safer if you’re not having to squint to see it. And those are just the automatic ideas, the ones that come from recycling the kinds of products that have already been proven to be hits for the iPhone and iPod product lines. That’s all before we even talk about the kind of hardware accessories that treat the iPad like the small computer that it is, and not the supersized iPod touch that it also is.

Maybe it’s just too early. Perhaps vendors are working on whiz-bang iPad hardware accessories of all kinds as we speak, afraid to reveal it in a preview announcement just in case they’re the only one who’s come up with the idea thus far; every vendor knows that every competing vendor also reads those press releases. But even so, here’s hoping that the economic troubles of the past few years, and/or vendor uncertainty about the iPad’s mainstream potential isn’t holding back development of what by all rights should be a thriving iPad accessory industry – if not now, then soon.

Alas, for now, iPad users will have to be content to live with their cases, bags, and sleeves, along with all those shiny App Store apps, to tide them over until the real wave of innovative iPad accessories (hopefully) shows up.

The 2009 iProng 50 Awards

Announcing the top fifty accessories on the market for iPhone and iPod!