If not iPhone, then what?

Well, the mythic iPhone (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=2740433) has been announced and to everyone's surprise, it's a Linksys product, as the name is owned by their parent company Cisco. So the question now is what will Apple name their impending entry into the wireless phone market? Answer: iPod Phone. Yeah, it's a boring name, but here's the deal: we know a phone from Apple will be an expansion of the iPod line and the previous three expansions (Mini, Shuffle, and Nano) have all kept the iPod name. There's no good reason to break from that other than a desire to piss away brand recognition. As for the "phone" suffix, it's simply the most clear cut, least confusing word they could use. Yeah, they could go with "speak" or "talk" or "chat", but for simplicity "phone" cannot be beat. That said, the wireless phone market is considerably larger than the mobile media player market. As the two converge, the larger will consume the smaller until phones with media playing capabilities become the norm and dedicated media players win fall by the wayside. That being the case, perhaps it would be wiser to embrace that shift now, and rather than roll out their phone as an expansion, they could unveil it simply as the next gen iPod.

CateGoogles: mobile_tech Mood = unimpressed