Aussie Apple resellers receive boxes with "DO NOT OPEN" warning

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Australian resellers began receiving mysterious packages from Apple on Friday with a warning across the top that breaching the boxes ahead of June 10th would be a violation of their non-disclosure agreements with the company.

mactalk.com.au, which posted the below photo to its forums, notes that June 10th in Australia is actually around the same time of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs's June 9th WWDC keynote in the US. The site adds that it believes the boxes contain a single demonstration 3G iPhone to be displayed by the resellers immediately following the company's announcements.

Earlier this year, the Australian Apple fan site published a report in which it said that local resellers had started to receive guidance from the Cupertino-based company regarding a local 3G iPhone launch during the final week of June.

The report added that the touch-screen handset would arrive unlocked for use on many of the nation's wireless carriers and that Australian Apple resellers, unlike those in the US and Europe, would be privy to market the device to their customers.

In recent weeks both Vodafone and SingTel have announced deals with Apple to market the next-generation iPhone in Australia.

💬 61 Comments

gregalexander

said about 14 years ago

Why would they deliver a sample iPhone? Most of the rumors are that it won't look much different... not enough difference that people would go out of their way to see one is there????? Interesting...

Anyway, that's quite an early delivery... 4 days till they can open it. I can understand that it's a long weekend so delivery was on the last working day before Tuesday. Then Tuesday at 4am or so Steve gives his talk and they open the box... but surely it's a huge risk on Apple's part to be 4 days early? (is it possible they meant to deliver Monday evening but forgetting Monday is a holiday they said deliver on the previous working day?)

I guess I'll check back midnight on Tuesday morning to see what it was.... before Steve speaks.
(though quite possibly every reseller will be instructed to open it only afterwards)

emerge3d

said about 14 years ago

clearly fake!!!

sigs21

said about 14 years ago

FAKE...

Apple would not risk... steve being upstaged....

southerndoc

said about 14 years ago

Give me a break here.

A couple points:

1. Why would Apple print out a shipping label on a regular piece of paper and tape it to the box? Everything I've ever received from Apple has been an actual shipping label, not a homemade job of just taping a piece of paper to the box. THIS SCREAMS FAKE.

2. Why would Apple place the shipping label on the bottom of the box?

I'm surprised AppleInsider posted this photo. It's clearly fake.