Giving a company a name is one thing. The next is naming its products.
Usually, naming a product involves finding a name that sells. This way, the company can ensure that its products can be remembered easily by the public.
At the same time, naming sometimes also involves finding a name that is also manageable internally, meaning that the company needs to come up with a name that is distinguishable but recognizable among its numerous other products.
When the two don't meet, confusion can happen.
At least that is what Qualcomm is experiencing.
This is why the chipmaker announced a rebrand of its "Snapdragon" products that includes an updated naming scheme and a revised visual system.
To "welcome the new era", the company starts by separating the Qualcomm brand name and the Snapdragon brand name.
In practice, the company wants to stop putting Qualcomm as a preface of Snapdragon in its marketing materials.
Qualcomm wants the public to recognize Snapdragon as its product, by making the naming cleaner and shorter.
In other words, the company wants its chip brand to become a stand alone product brand with specific ties to the Qualcomm brand only where appropriate.
Second, Qualcomm is also changing Snapdragon's labeling method.
For years, Qualcomm has labeled its chips with three-digit names, like the Snapdragon 480, Snapdragon 765, or Snapdragon 888.
The first number broadly informed customers on how powerful the chip is, with a higher number representing more powerful chip.
The second number typically indicated annual generational releases, while the third number generally showed more minor updates.
With the change, Qualcomm in moving away from this three-digit numbering system, into a single-digit series.
So instead of Qualcomm Snapdragon 888, the company is shifting to “Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2,” for example.
The third change is changing the badging, which serves as visual representations of the chip in artwork and other marketing.
Gold "will now be used to represent only our premium-tier products," while other colors include Midnight, Gunmetal, Nickel, and Snapdragon Red.
Similarly, the "fireball" icon is meant to “gain new prominence,” while “5G” is no longer be shown as it has "become ubiquitous across our Snapdragon Portfolio."
The idea of rebranding is to make things more structured and consistent.
The Snapdragon naming system, Qualcomm wants to be remembered as a company name, not a product's
What's more, the change is make things easier for people to remember its products and refer then to. With the change, customers can easily go to Snapdragon for products, without getting lost between the hectic numbering system.
For those who wants to seek the latest and the most powerful chip Qualcomm makes, for example, they can easily find it with the updated naming system.
Qualcommm plans to unleash the updating naming system to its Snapdragon on November 30.