Tech brands branded totally bogus

What? Centrino Pro no go

A resarch report suggests that chip brands are universally rubbish. A combination of bad naming and so-called 'brand attacks' from AMD have left Intel wanting, after the retirement of its solid gold Pentium brand, said In-Stat. The boffins said that the use of model number schemes for processors had further increased confusion, which will please Charlie, who has been bonking on about model numbers for years.

This is bad news for Intel, which spent a good few million dollars to bring in Samsung marketing guru Eric Kim to rebrand. Shortly after finishing the exercise, he was effectively demoted, as the engineers took back Intel from the marketing bods. But Intel isn't the only brand to suffer - DAAMIT, IBM and VIA all came in for a kicking, too.

The In-Stat report has a lot of 'duh, obviously' quotes, such as revealing that similarities in product brand names, like Core 2 Quad and Geforce Quadro, can be confusing to consumers. No, really?

Intel now has a raft of model-based processors in the Core 2 Duo and Celeron families, which themselves form parts of various professional and consumer platforms such as Viiv and Centrino. Centrino has been the one 'hit' in all these branding exercises, pairing a brand that not only had massive OEM support but hit the market at the right place and the right time to get mass consumer acceptance.

Things are about to get more complicated, as AMD introduces the Phenom brand to replace the Athlon and a new FASN8 gaming rig to take on Intel's Skullcrushing monster. Naming suggestions are still pouring in from readers, with Nathan Der Weise pointing out that FASN8, in German, becomes Fasnacht, which translates to "carnival". AMD is certainly planning a bit of a dog and pony show around this one, but did it mean it quite so literally?

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39760