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October 20, 2009

Droid Phone Naming: An Irresistible Force for iPhone Owners

So Internet geeks around the world are rejoicing over the forthcoming "Droid" smartphone war, or to quote the NY Post, who in turn quoted Yoda, "Begun, the droid wars have."

Verizon, Motorola and Google have licensed the product name from George Lucas and on Sunday the new TV spot came out, which looks like a teaser for a movie. The ad, entitled iDon't, lists all the things the iPhone, er, doesn't do. They even have a web site called droiddoes.com.

According to Beta News:

While the ad harkens back to the 16-bit era of video gaming when Sega ran a campaign with a nearly identical tag line ("Genesis Does what Nintendon't"), it is one of the most direct advertising attacks a Fortune 500 company has made on Apple, which has itself been directly attacking Microsoft Windows in its advertisements for many years.

The reviews on this thing have been very positive, but of course I am interested in the naming.

Everyone who has watched Star Wars knows what a "droid" is - an intelligent robot. Anyone who has not will probably think it has something to do with the Android system behind it. I have written before about the (somewhat sinister) Android name, of course, but this is different, because these guys really are aiming at iPhone customers.

And if you want to entice customers away from Apple, naming a phone after a Star Wars character is almost unfair because, let's face it, Apple people are Star Wars people. The temptation to dump an iPhone to own your own droid will really be hard to resist on the part of most Apple folks.

Just watch. Every single male iPhone owner under the age of fifty will feel the Force call him.

Technorati Tags: Droid, Droid Does, Droid Naming, Droid Phone, Verizon Droid, Motorola Droid, Droid vs iPhone, iPhone Competition, Droid Advertising

Posted by William Lozito at October 20, 2009 9:20 AM
Posted to Brand Naming | Branding | Consumer Electronics | Durable Goods | Industry | Marketing | Media and Entertainment | Naming | Product Naming | Technology | Telecommunications

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