iAudio name for players, too close to iPod ?

[Aevum]

well, just about that,

alot of cheap knockoffs add the "i" infront of the product name to people think ipod when they buy it, and i was wondering, cowon makes great mp3 players, actually great media players, daps and in general, excelent products in quality and features, alot of them make ipods look like chinese knockoffs,

the thing is, are the products cheapend by the fact that the name is iAUDIO with the i infront, ipod style ?

[mrsmr2]

I've no idea where iAudio comes from.

I have a D2 and there is no mention of iAudio in any of the documentation (I'm in Europe).

Maybe there are phasing the name out or it's a US name.

[JimS]

That's a really funny comment because the letter i had been used in lots of mp3 players before the iPod even came to market. I-JAM, iRiver, iAudio all preceeded the iPod. I-JAM was the first I know of to use the letter. iAudio & iRiver both came out in Q4 2000 while the iPod came out a year later in Q4 2001. Isn't Apple's marketing machine a force? The iPod was very well made and marketed to people who had previously not been into the idea of music files on a little hard drive or flash player. The ease of just putting in a CD and having iTunes dump it onto your player, and the good integration of iTMS with iPod all helped speed adoption among the broader consumer market (not just technical hobbiests).

[MaxSt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac

The company announced the iMac on 7 May 1998, and started shipping the iMac on 15 August 1998.

Apple declared the "i" in iMac to stand for "Internet".

[JimS]

And IMAC was a registered trademark in 1993 for a footwear company, still an active trademark. Or Imac was a registered trademark for a paper company in 1951. Or IMAC was a registered trademark Tasnet making computers and software for electricity substations in 1990, but was abandoned in 1994 for a new filing, which was later cancelled in 2001. Apple registered it's IMAC trademark in 1995, after all this.

To highlight how little impact the iMac trademark for computers has in relation to the mp3 player market space, one of Apple's contentions in their fight against Cisco who holds the iPhone trademark in the US is that Cisco's trademark is for a phone that does VOIP instead of using a cellular network. Their arguing they can use the exact same name for a phone because the two use different methods of communication, even those to the end users, it's a phone call.

[afruff23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac
What does that have to do with anything? Does Apple suddenly have control over the "i" prefix? It doesn't work like that in trademark laws. I have an eVGA graphics card. Can apple sue them for having made the eMac?

[MaxSt]

Does Apple suddenly have control over the "i" prefix?

No, I never said that.

My point is that iPod is not the first product with the small "i" prefix.

[mrsmr2]

Out of interest, where does iAudio come from?

Is it a US brand name for Cowon or the original brand name, or something else?

[JimS]

No, I never said that.

My point is that iPod is not the first product with the small "i" prefix.

When it comes to technology, neither was the iMac for that matter. Apple filed for the iMac trademark on April 28, 1998. InfoGear filed for the iPhone trademark on March 20, 1996, more than two years before iMac. InfoGear has since been acquired by Cisco and Cisco now owns the iPhone trademark. In DAPs, for the little "i", both iAudio and iRiver preceeded iPod by about a year. Apple wasn't the first to trademark a product with an iName in tech by any measure.

[mssx]

it's good that they are moving away from the iAudio name. i think it makes the name sound like an iPod knock off..won is the currency of Korea..does Cowon have to do anything with that? :S

[608zz]

The name does nothing to the quality of the product, so no, it doesn’t cheapen it. It seems that the only people who would find issue with a name are children buying the device for show-&-tell material. Play it, don't display it.