Last week I was at the Industrial Designer’s Society of America (IDSA) annual conference in San Francisco (which I will write more about soon).  It was there that I was reminded of a big mistake Apple made with the iPhone.  And that is its name.

Before each main conference session began, a voice would announce “Please turn off your cell phones and Blackberries.”  And there it is.  In contrast with the iPod, which gave us a completely new word for the fetishistic object created by Apple to further enhance its uniqueness and desirabililty.  Everything else was just an MP3 player.  But the iPod was something special.  It combined an innovative and easy to use interface, with a highly differentiated contemporary design, and a software ecosystem (iTunes) and went on to become a monumental success.  It became a category unto itself.
Now, I believe that the iPhone will be very successful.  Apple has done nearly everything it did with the iPod: created an innovative and easy to use interface, an evolutionary design (similar form factor to the iPod with new materials and colors), and integration with iTunes.  But why in the world did Apple settle with calling it a phone?  Steve Jobs even said in his keynote speech introducing the iPhone that its killer app was making calls.  Ouch!  The real killer app was that it seamlessly integrates a phone, web browser, ipod, and email device into one.  The iPod was originally billed as “1,000 songs in your pocket”.  The iPhone could’ve been “The world in your pocket”.

But I digress.  Unfortunately, calling the product a phone causes people to mentally classify it with every other phone on the market.  Whereas RIM doesn’t make a phone, they make the Blackberry.  I don’t think we’ll be hearing “Please turn off your phones, Blackberries and iPhones” in the future.  Apple missed an opportunity here.  They spent several years developing the product.  The iPhone is to other phones as the iPod was (and to a large extent still is) to other MP3 players.  Apple should have put more effort into the name.  The product deserves it, and will suffer because of it.