The mega bite

WHAT IS IT WITH TECHIES and fruit? From the obvious ones, such as Apple and BlackBerry, to telecom provider Orange (now in its Vodafone avatar in India), Lemon mobiles, to the latest Windows phone, Mango, all seem to either love a healthy bite or suffer from a lack of imagination during the ‘seed’ stage. The name Mango was intended to be just a code. But the world’s geek press seems to have liked it so much that it didn’t want to refer to it by its boring official name—Windows Phone 7.5. So is it herd mentality to follow Apple? Or is it demystifying tech and packaging it in layman’s terms? Anmol Dar, managing director at brand evaluation firm Superbrands India, says: “It helps that fruits are easy to remember, and there is an amount of familiarity. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with these simple names.” Google has gone a step ahead and drawn on desserts for names of its Android mobile operating system—Gingerbread, Ice-cream Sandwich, Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, and Froyo (frozen yoghurt).