When I saw the headline for the latest generation of the iPhone, I was brought back to a moment within a Nokia press conference. I had inquired about nomenclature (“how does Nokia name their phones?”). Notice that never in the history of Nokia has a phone been named with a number “4.” The scale goes up from 1100, 2100, 3650 … it skips 4 .. then moves on to 5530, 6310, etc. The same goes for several other tech brands such as Canon and Palm.
In Chinese numerology, the number “4” signifies death. Nokia is a Finnish company with a wide penetration in Asia. That’s a big market. Several brands have taken this into account when naming products because it does affect sales. Did Apple miss this out, or are they intentionally doing this because they, frankly, don’t give a damn?
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