Remember Apple’s boast upon its initial release of the iPhone, that the screen was tough enough to withstand scratches of almost any magnitude? Well, that line of marketing has long since ended as more and more reports of exploding iPhones hit the headlines.

Apple’s latest ‘victim’ is a French teenager, who claims to have been hit in the eye by a missiled piece of iPhone, after the handset made a hissing sound before the screen shattered.

This explosive revelation comes just a couple of weeks after a similar incident on this side of the Channel.

Earlier this month, The Times reported the death of an iPod Touch after it too made a hissing sound before expelling smoke and launching itself ten feet into the air, enough to qualify it for the Olympic high jumping team.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission in California also has documents outlining another 15 cases of burns cases as a result of people chilling out with their iPod tunes.

Will these eruptive instances blast a hole in Apple’s consumer confidence? Well, no. There is as much chance of that happening as there is of the mobile phone itself going out of fashion. In fact, if you’re a teenager and your iPhone goes nuts on you, that’s extra kudos in school yard.

Granted the above cases of “electronics gone frenetic” do show the real-life dangers of an addiction to Beyonce. However, if you compare the number of reported Apple products with the company’s global sales figures, you have more chance of being seriously injured or killed by a hippopotamus, rather than by checking the latest Ashes results on your iPhone.

Let’s see the next gen iPhone blast onto the market.