The Apple iPhone is a great product. It has revolutionized mobile phones and become another huge success for Apple. Unfortunately, a number of incidents involving “exploding” iPhones could hinder the product and the company. So why not blame the owners themselves?

Apple has a very hot product on its hands with the iPhone. It has sold in excess of 26 million units around the world to date and the device has spawned a number of copycats. However, if there was a fault with the new iPhone 3GS which meant the screen was at risk of exploding then this could seriously damage Apple reputation, iPhone sales, and the faces of anyone who is holding the product when it blew up.

The problem of “exploding” iPhones first came to light in early July when an 18-year-old man from France was allegedly hit in the eye by glass from the screen of his iPhone. Since then there have been a number of similar incidents reported throughout Europe, with cases in France, Belgium, Holland, and the U.K.

The last week has seen a ramping up in incidents, which has prompted French watchdog DGCCRF to investigate the complaints. The European Commission has used its system for alerting the community to dangerous consumer products, RAPEX, to issue an alert to all 27 EU member states warning of the problem and asking for further incidents to be reported.

Apple has denied there is even a problem of this nature. The company has cooperated with the EC but claims these are all isolated incidents which don’t indicate a problem inherent in the iPhone 3GS. In fact, rather than overheating causing these “exploding” iPhones it’s actually the users’ own fault.

BBC News reports Apple as having issued a statement saying:

To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits. The iPhones with broken glass that we have analyzed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone.

The problem is that the people who have had this problem occur have denied they were to blame and denied applying an external force to their iPhone. Who to believe? People who have had their iPhone suddenly implode in their hands or a company looking to protect its reputation in the face of what could be a major problem for one of its flagship products?

At this point the incidents do appear to be isolated and not great in number. But if they continue to occur then Apple may find it has a problem on its hands. If enough iPhones explode to persuade people there is a genuine risk of this happening to them then sales could be harmed. I’m guessing this is a story that will not be disappearing any time soon.

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Entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 11:40 pm under Apple, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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