When a product based company launches a new company, one of the things they have to take note of is the nomenclature of their product lineup. Apple has been very consistent with its nomenclature with all its products getting the ‘Generation’ treatment. For example, every year, when they release their new iPhone, it gets a name change in the form of the generation (like iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 7, and so on).
When Apple launched the X series of their iPhone product, many keen-eyed fans noticed a change in the matrix. This is because, the iPhone series that came before iPhone X, was the iPhone 8 series, and contrary to the trend, Apple completely skipped the ‘9’ moniker, and directly went for X(or 10). Some believed that there was some superstition, while some even went as far as to claim that Apple simply forgot. The reason, however, was completely different.
The year 2017 marked the 10th anniversary of the iPhone and Apple simply decided to mark a new beginning for the iPhone lineup, with a fresh new design, new features, and a completely new direction, and to celebrate all these things at once, they named the new device, the iPhone X.
Now, if you are scratching your heads over why they did this, it will interest you to know that Microsoft also has done something like this when they went from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. Samsung also changed things up when they named their new flagship ‘S20’ to mark the beginning of a new decade of innovation.
What we can take away from this is that the process of naming the device or product has to be thought out and planned well in advance to have the right impact on the audience and on the company as well. At times, just going with the incremental nomenclature works, but when there is a certain milestone that the company is going to achieve, a change in this trend is almost always, guaranteed.
