When Steve Jobs heralded the iPhone as being as revolutionary as the iPod during his MacWorld keynote in San Francisco on Tuesday, he must have known that it was going to be a bloody revolution. Sure enough, Cisco has now fired the first shots with a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California which cites preventing Apple “from infringing upon and deliberately copying and using Cisco’s registered iPhone trademark.”
The device is not earth shatteringly different from that which has gone before, and to be brutally honest its biggest value comes by way of the brand association. If this were the ‘Apple Smartphone’ or the ‘MacMobile’ it simply would not be generating the kind of totally to be expected hyperbole that it is. However, because it is another ‘i’ device, the iPod evolved, a lifestyle and cultural icon taken to the next stage of development, there can be little doubt it will sell well. Assuming , of course, it is allowed to be called an iPhone , and that is in serious doubt.