Comments on: Xohm is coming… um, ok?

By: Xohm goes Clear

Xohm goes Clear — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:14:27 +0000

[...] the branding mess that is Xohm, Sprint and Clearwire have announced that their joined network will be called [...]

By: JW

JW — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 04:36:07 +0000

Explanation I read for the Xohm brand was that since it would be sold in Sprint stores with its own price point and approach (all devices/open access, NO equipment subsidy etc), it needed its own brand to differentiate it from Sprint CDMA cellular voice/data offerings.

I suppose its intended to manage customer expectations — to make clear how WiMax is different from CDMA. Could also extend life of EVDO as Xohm wont be available nationwide immediately.

By: VoIP Watch: XOHM and SprintSpeed

VoIP Watch: XOHM and SprintSpeed — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:53:46 +0000

[...] Pal Jonathan Green has a post about Sprint and their mobile Wimax branding strategy. I’m sure Xohm will be pronounced ZOOM but like JG I tend to think it means SprintSpeed and would be better at making people adopt. [...]

By: Jonathan Greene

Jonathan Greene — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:08:40 +0000

though those examples are all from companies that have no prior existence. This is Sprint. They’ve existed for several decades and Xohm is a service from them…

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:59:51 +0000

Absolutely agree with above posts. Branding is not so much informative or pragmatic as it catching and elusive. Examples: “Skype”, “Google”, “Oracle”, “Sprint”. “IBM” and “Microsoft” are exceptions.

By: Nombre

Nombre — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:35:26 +0000

Google, Yahoo, Vonage..
The list goes on.

If you wish to establish a market leading position
for a new technology, you don’t brand it by the category
or a descriptive term like Speed. You can’t own that for very long
or very well.

WiMax is a category. Xohm will be the first to stake out a trademark in the
category. If the service works as promised, people will start to think
of Xohm as Wimax.

Much like people think of “Googling” instead of “Searching” on the internet
now

Which is why all the other search engines are looking up (Way Up) at Google.
Who did it better and turned it’s brand from a Proper Noun to a Verb with it’s success.

Once you learn how to pronounce Xohm, the learning curve is over and you never will forget it. If it’s as impressive as promised, they will be in a strong
position to hold market share when eventually all the competitors
catch up.

By: Charbax

Charbax — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 01:34:07 +0000

People said the same about Wii and XO and once they are out, they turn out to be a great name. It’s all about being short and using interesting combination of charachters that make the solution easilly identifiable.