TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: What's in a Name?: That Which We Call an iPhone by Any Other Name

Re: What's in a Name?: That Which We Call an iPhone by Any Other Name

ranck@vt.edu
Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:43:40 +0000 (UTC)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> wrote:

> What makes these trademark shenanigans all the more peculiar is that
> at the same MacWorld show this week Apple introduced another product
> called Apple TV, which it first demonstrated last year under the name
> iTV. (Just as an aside, one reader pointed out, "Look at the Mac
> Mini, the Apple TV, and the new AirPort extreme, all the same size
> and Bob's version of Apple's multimedia PC is stacking up, for less
> than $1,000.") Well, it turned out that Elgato Systems makes a
> product called EyeTV (pronounced "iTV" obviously), which is a line of
> Macintosh video capture devices -- some with tuners -- so Apple
> backed off and changed the product name to Apple TV.

> So Apple changed its marketing, diluting its whole "iThis" and "iThat"
> naming strategy in deference to Elgato, a company they could buy with
> a weekend's earnings from the iTunes Store, but chose to go toe-to-toe
> with Cisco, a company that's bigger, richer, and just as mean as Apple
> any day. If an iTV can become an Apple TV, why can't an iPhone become
> an Apple Phone?

Or, perhaps Apple didn't want to take on ITV, a very large media
conglomerate based in England? I don't know the relative size of ITV
and Cisco, but it's unlikely Apple would want to wage two big
trademark battles at once.

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

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