Cheaper Apple accessories start to appear

Under Steve Jobs, Apple was aimed fair and square at the ‘aspirational' side of town. Forget how much you had, this is the product you want – why don't you save up or borrow to get it? That thinking appeared to fail Apple the first time around and, eventually, Jobs was sacked. The PC was simply too competitive and Apple did not react. This time around, Tim Cook is looking to make better business decisions. KitGuru notices that, where Apple goes, the accessories market is sure to follow.

When we looked at Apple's potentially misleading packaging back in September, we could not help but notice that accessories with an Apple badge on or near them – naturally appeared to be much more expensive than the actual face value of the product would suggest.

Apple's own brand value – built on ultra slimline sheets of brushed aluminium etc – was carrying across to cheap plastic products built for that eco-system in the Far East.

Now that Apple has moved toward providing cheaper official products, we're seeing a corresponding move from the companies that make accessories for the Apple market.

Sandberg is a Danish accessories company, established in 1985 by Martin and Erling Petersen. They like to think of themselves as the ‘Ikea of the accessories market'. Packaging is simple, instructions are clear and ‘nerdy stuff' only appears when absolutely necessary. Ikea uses black, white, blue and yellow – while Sandberg has swapped the blue for purple. But you get the drift: Sandberg wants to offer high quality, usable products – with a 5 year warranty – but without charging you more than its competitors.

Enter the Sandberg BatteryCase.

This is a 1900 mAh product that slips over your iPhone and gives it an additional battery – while protecting it from being dropped. Nice.

Also, you just plug in the one cable – and both your iPhone and the Sandberg BatteryCase will both start recharging at the same time.

That brings us to the price.

The protection for your phone – and the extra hours of charge you need to get you through a busy day – will cost your local shop around £15. Add on VAT and we have £18. After that, it just comes down to how much the shop wants to make on the deal. We expect to see these Sandberg iPhone BatteryCases on sale for less than £30 in the UK (€35/$45). Not bad. Not bad at all.

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KitGuru says: Most of KitGuru moved to the Blackberry 9900 when it came out and the phone is a design disaster area. Most notably, for a ‘business device', Blackberry made the moronic decision to slim down the design at the expense of the battery. As a result, you're left with ‘Blackberry: Tell your story, but tell it quick cos the battery will fail any second now'. The idea that Apple's already strong battery can be boosted further – and in such a convenient way – for less than £30 is very appealing.

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