Mophie's H2PRO, a $130 battery case for iPhone, protects in shallow water for up to 30 minutes
Mophie's latest iPhone battery case is also waterproof — Battery cases can prove to be a must-have for iPhone 6 owners, and the same goes for ruggedized cases that protect Apple's smartphone against the elements.
Context & Ripple Effects
The H2PRO is Mophie's third iPhone 6-era case play inside four months: January brought juice pack pre-orders starting at $99.95 for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, April added the Space Pack with up to 128GB of storage plus extra battery, and now the company is stacking water protection on top of charging — each release carving out a differentiator as plain battery cases head toward commoditization.
The category Mophie was building turned out big enough to attract everyone: Apple launched its own $99 Smart Battery Case seven months later, and accessory maker Zagg bought Mophie outright for $100M in early 2016. That sequence frames the H2PRO less as a niche rugged case than as evidence of how valuable the battery-case slot on an iPhone became.
First-order effects
- iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners who previously had to choose between a battery case and a rugged one can now get both functions in a single $130 product — a premium over the $99.95 starting point of Mophie's standard juice pack line.
- Waterproofing gives Mophie a spec advantage over every other battery case on the shelf at launch, letting it defend its price point on capability rather than capacity alone.
Second-order effects
- Apple's decision to ship its own Smart Battery Case validated the demand Mophie was surfacing, even though reviewers found it extended battery life only about 80% — behind third-party rivals at higher cost — leaving room for Mophie to keep winning on features like water protection and expandable storage.
- Zagg's subsequent $100M purchase of Mophie shows competitors and consolidators pricing the iPhone accessory slot as a strategic asset worth owning outright.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, battery cases stop being a third-party commodity: platform owners like Apple keep iterating their own first-party versions (the $129 Qi-charging models for iPhone XR/XS arrived in 2019), while specialist accessory makers get absorbed into larger accessory portfolios.
- The durable lesson is that any high-volume phone category where the OEM under-serves users — here, battery life and durability — becomes a contested layer where specialists differentiate fast until the platform owner moves in.
The trend: iPhone battery cases evolved from commodity third-party add-ons into a differentiated accessory market that drew both specialist acquisitions and sustained first-party competition from Apple.