Ashwinn Krishnaswamy, a partner at the New York-based branding agency Forge Coop, believes the “i” prefix is outdated. “Connectivity is ubiquitous today. There’s less of this notion of online versus offline, so it makes little sense to append an ‘i’ to products. It’s overused, it’s dated.”
Could Apple drop the iPhone name? Krishnaswamy thinks so: “Apple could call it virtually anything, and we’re still going to buy it. If Apple said there will be no more iPhones—here’s the Apple Phone—we’ll start calling it the Apple Phone. Apple has such massive distribution, brand, and product awareness that dropping the ‘i’ in iPhone will not harm their sales.”
Anton Perreau, who leads the New York office for the communications agency Battenhall, agrees that Apple wouldn’t lose sales by dropping the “i” prefix. However, he predicts that Apple won’t make the change until a future iteration of the iPhone is significantly redesigned.
“The iPhone has such a level of fame, such a level of goodwill, I don’t see the name changing until Apple introduces a phone that looks nothing like the existing ones. They’ve spent so much time and money building the brand equity in the iPhone, so the change won’t happen until Apple brings out a product that could have even stronger brand equity than iPhone,” Perreau explains.
He also notes that Apple has been gradually moving away from the “i” branding. “The ‘i’ branding is a hallmark of the Steve Jobs era,” Perreau says. “The newer names—like the Apple Watch and the Apple Vision Pro—show a strategic evolution. Apple didn’t announce they’d dropped the ‘i,’ they just haven’t said anything about it. The brand isn’t ‘i,’ the brand is Apple.”
Despite this shift, the legacy of iProducts beyond the iPhone and iPad is extensive: iMac, iBook, iPod, iPod Mini, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle, iPod Touch, iPad Mini, and iPad Air, among others. This shows how deeply Apple leaned on its iconic “i” prefix.
