Brand Power’s Effect on Software Design

Image via Wikipedia

A good friends of mine recently casually replied: ‘Don’t be so pedantic’ (or something along those lines) in response to me commenting that what they referred to as their ‘iPhone’ actually was an Android phone. It’s not that the person is stupid (far from it) or didn’t know what kind of phone they owned.

It was just their way of referring to this new type of phone with the fancy, animated buttons, a ‘large’ screen and computer like behaviour (and so complicated that even Bjarne Stroustrup finds it too much – allegedly). The power of Apple’s brand is such, that the average phone user (sometimes) thinks ‘iPhone’, even when they see an Android phone.

I guess there is nothing new here – the Danish word for ‘instant coffee’ is ‘Nescafe’. The French fought hard to regain ‘Champagne‘ (and leaving the Australians with the word ‘sparkling wine’), and similar for the Greeks over the word ‘Feta‘ (this time the Danes lost). As a consumer, it doesn’t really matter – although the producers may or may not like the association.

However, it is quite different for software….

A lot people still cannot associate a desktop or laptop with anything other than Windows. I like to read the odd article at techcrunch.com, but the comments section mandates a login to Facebook. iPhone appears to be doing similar things for smartphones (or just ‘phones’ as they’ll probably be called soon), even if Google currently are selling more Android phones.

For software, a strong brand can actually dramatically reduce our choice – e.g., equating a web login account to Facebook or smartphone to iPhone would not be a good thing. I, for one, would like to live in a world with more than Windows, Facebook and iPhones…