At its annual shareholder meeting, Catcher Technology CEO Allen Horng claims that Apple will be moving to a glass casing for the iPhone in 2017. Horng said the reason for this change would be to differentiate to handsets from one another.
“As far as I know, only one [iPhone] model will adopt glass casing next year,” Horng told reporters after the annual shareholder meeting on Thursday. “I don’t think this move will have an impact on Catcher’s revenue as glass casing still needs a durable metal frame which requires advanced processing technology and would not be cheaper than the current model. Horng said there will be no Apple handsets using glass-only casings without metal frames next year.
Apple contributed over 33% of Catcher’s revenue of $82.41 billion New Taiwan dollars ($2.5 billion) for 2015."
While this report does follow rumors claiming that Apple's next big redesign would be next year, this is the first we're hearing of an all glass casing. First thing that pops into my mind is an iPhone that looks like Apple's Magic Mouse.