The iPhone economy emerges

"There's a lot of buzz over this," says Rod Schecter, a spokesman for Gomadic, a Herndon, Va.-based charger manufacturer that has already posted an iPhone page on its website. "We felt we needed to put an antennae out there to gauge demand."

While it's unusual for manufacturers to offer accessories before the actual product is available, it didn't make sense to wait in this case, Schecter says.

"Once in a while, there's a product that changes its specs, and we don't want our chargers to cause damage. But we've never had that problem with Apple," he says, adding that iPhone and iPod amps are widely expected to be the same. "If not, our engineers can sort it out very quickly."

In any case, Gomadic has yet to receive any advance orders for its iPhone chargers. That's not surprising, since "no one owns the product," Schecter says.

That doesn't surprise DLO's Green. "I don’t know why any one would buy windshield wipers when they don't have the car yet," he says.

Apart from marketing, Green says, there is a very real danger of designing an accessory that's not compatible with the finished product. Apple hasn't released the iPhone's final specs, leaving most manufacturers to rely on industry leaks and other sources — such as product details contained in last month's FCC ruling. Despite announcing the iPhone in January, Apple has been continually working to develop the actual working technology for it ever since, Green says.

"You have to get it right the first time or you lose valuable time," says Greens. "That's the biggest risk you take for jumping on the band wagon early."

For its part, DLO will officially unveil its products in conjunction with the iPhone launch, which could be as early as June 11, Green says. He believes consumers currently trolling accessory websites are really just looking for pictures and data on the iPhone itself.

Rob Honeycutt, the owner of Zuluworks, a San Francisco-based travel gear manufacturer, says there are other offsetting risks of launching to soon, even in an industry where competitors thrive on being first to market.

"If you're out there way too early, there's a good chance you'll lose a lot of attention as the anticipation grows," he says.

Honeycutt, like many small accessory makers, has promoted Zuluworks cotton canvas iPhone cases on tech blogs and other social networking sites in recent months, even offering a 20 percent "pre-launch" discount.

He decided to unveil the cases at the end of May, figuring Apple would launch in less than a month. "I'm hoping we're hitting it just right," he says. "If you launch too close, you can get lost in the smoke, especially for a little company like ours. For us, it helps to launch at a time when the air is clear."

In any case, Honeycutt says, smaller companies can't afford not to ride Apple's costly marketing hype for all it's worth.

“It's always better to pull the trigger too early," Honeycutt says, "instead of too late."

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