Lost-Stolen iPhone Not a Big Deal

The long and involved story of an iPhone prototype lost or stolen from a California bar has been an enormous news item among the blogs. After an Apple employee left it behind on a bar stool, the finder turned it over to Gizmodo.com, reportedly for $5,000. The handset was taken apart, probed, photographed and video’d, as if it were some type of alien artifact. In fact, leaks from Apple over the past few months have let most the gas out of this story. We all knew the phone would have a front-facing camera. The replaceable battery and other features are pretty well known. The squared-off design is certainly a little odd, but then maybe it’s just one of many possible designs. The bottom line is that Apple has reaped an enormous amount of publicity over the incident, while competitors have gleaned almost nothing they didn’t already know about the future iPhone. At the same time, anyone who was considering a smartphone purchase has just postponed it, attracted by the new (and certain) features of the leaked model. The blogs are making this out to the be security breach of the century only to bolster their own stories. What materially was damaged here? Nothing. So, if I were Steve, I’d give the employee a couple of weeks off without pay, be happy that the incident has primed the frenzy over the June-July introduction of the new iPhone model, and then push on. It’s a great story, but doesn’t really affect Apple negatively.