Newton to drop Apple branding

Apple Computer is axing the Apple logo from its mobile communications subsidiary’s products this year in an attempt to appeal to business customers. In two years Apple has shed over 2,000 staff and made losses totalling 1bn.

Newton Inc, with worldwide sales of 127m, is 80 per cent-owned by Apple. It will adopt a new marque based around its name and rays of light coming from a lightbulb. The new logo was developed by San Francisco-based design and ad agency Stone Yamashita.

Roy Bedlow, European marketing manager for Newton Inc, says: “Our customers are different, and the way we will sell to them is different. We sell to a lot of corporations and many ask us to take the Apple logo off. Businesses don’t believe Apple can cater for corporate clients.

“After a lot of internal discussion we felt that a clean break was needed to build this brand.”

Newton manufactures the mobile computer MessagePad 2000 and also licences its technology to other companies. It has developed a separate Newton Technology logo to put on products by other companies which license its software. The idea is similar to Intel’s Intel Inside scheme.

The logos will appear on the company’s livery immediately, and on its machines by the end of the year.

Recommended

Camelot:Why gaming laws need revamp

Marketing Week

I find myself in the somewhat unaccustomed position of writing to you in support of your piece “Government must act on gaming laws” (MW July 24). I entirely agree that a wholesale review of the UK gaming industry is needed and that piecemeal deregulation carries certain dangers, not least the absence of informed public debate. […]

Dishing the dirt on direct mail

Marketing Week

The Data Protection Registrar has many powers, but cannot stop pranksters from making chumps out of the direct marketing industry. One acquaintance of the Diary has suffered a barrage of unwelcome direct mail. He was the victim of a prankster who used his address to target him with dozens of mail-outs using phoney, and often […]

Truce looms for comparitive ads

Marketing Week

Brussels has come up with a compromise which aims to protect both the consumer and legitimate brand builders to solve the comparative advertising conundrum. By John Shannon. John Shannon is president of Grey International.