I don’t know the rationale behind this, but Cingular wireless is going to change back to AT&T name. I am not brand expert, nor marketing major, but this is a dumb move. A little background: when Southwest Bell (SBC) and Bellsouth created this wireless joint venture, they created this cool name “Cingular”, I remember my first wireless carrier was SBC Wireless, which is the ancester of Cingular. For a while I was puzzuled when my cell phone screen changed from “SBC wireless” to “Cingular”, wondering whether my phone is being hacked.
Fast forward six years, Cingular bought AT&T Wireless, SBC bought AT&T and is buying Bellsouth, in the meantime SBC changes its name to AT&T. Now they are going to drop the cool brand Cingular they created and use the old brand. I am thinking they could as well sell this brand to Apple. For AT&T they could make some money out of this brand which they invested a fortune; for Apple they could get a cool brand for its coming mobile phone without any name controversy 🙂
Oh, well, I am not share holders of Apple or AT&T, why do I care ?!