Case company Hard Candy sold thousands of cases for a mystery Apple device that it believed Tim Cook would unveil yesterday.
Customer’s were so excited by the prospect of a jumbo iPhone with a 4.44-inch diagonal screen, they pre-ordered a couple of thousand cases based on the rumor.
“Crazy day,” said Hard Candy CEO Tim Hickman after the Apple event. “We have to cancel a few orders. Two thousand cases were ordered since you ran your story. That’s bad ass! Apple consumers love, love, love to play in this world.”
Early on Tuesday morning, a few hours before Cook’s keynote, we reported that Hard Candy was making 50,000 cases for a mystery Apple product with a much larger screen than most people were expecting.
But contrary to Hard Candy’s expectations, the device wasn’t unveiled.
Nonetheless, Hard Candy still plans to make the molds for the cases. Hickman believes Apple may still introduce the device — though when he doesn’t know when.
“We are still continuing the process of making the molds,” he said. “Why not? Apple’s gotta rock a new iPhone eventually and the data did come from somewhere.”
Hickman was pleased that some of the company’s intelligence was dead on.
“We got the iPhone 4S right and will have fresh designs for that model,” he added. “And the designs (for the mystery product) must have been pretty good! Black Bubble Case was number one, followed by Orchid.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
23 responses to “Case Company Sells 2,000 Cases For Apple’s No-Show Mystery Device [Exclusive]”
I think that iPhone 5 teardrop design was a fake by another case manufacture, trying to fool it’s competitors
Well those customers got screwed. Never buy a case for an iPhone that has not been officially announced by Apple. The cases look like crap anyway.
Poor fellas!!
I dont get it, why would people risk buying a case before the release? i mean do people need a case that bad? whats so bad with buying the phone first, and then the case? Is this story even real??
Be advised that my post will probably be deleted once read. On January 5th, there is going to be another event for the iPhone 5 and the device will be available from January 17th.
is this a joke?
It’s over fanboy, give it up.
Yes and this message will self-destruct in 10 seconds.
By the time the iPhone 4G (or 4GS or 5 or 6) is released, the design may have changed slightly. They should delay manufacturing a bit longer.
I’ll believe that when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.
I”m not sure how they got screwed. They blindly bought a product based on rumor and speculation, so I’d say they screwed themselves. Anyway, from the article it would appear that they are being refunded so no harm, no foul if that’s the case. I think it’s idiotic for a company to pre-sale a product for another product that doesn’t exist.
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