Ahead of the arrival of the Meteor Lake chip, Intel decided to undergo a massive branding simplification. According to a report by The Verge, Intel has decided to remove the i from its “core i9,” “core i7,” “core i5,” and “core i3”. Further, the company has also asserted that their upcoming series will not be known as “14th Gen.” The brand is moving forward with changing the naming convention that it has followed since forever. The new branding will be enforced with the launch of the Meteor Lake Processors. The launch can be expected later this year.
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Intel is set to roll out a three-tier consumer chip, which would comprise Intel, Intel Core, and Intel Core Ultra. Reports suggest that Intel is going forward with this name change because “Intel” was getting lost, and the launch of Meteor Lake chips looks like a good opportunity to go ahead with this change.
The director of product branding at Intel, Christopher Hirsch, while conversing with The Verge, said, “When we looked at how the tech press, how our retailers, our OEMs, our partners talk about it, it was interesting to see how we got shortchanged all the way to a letter and a number.” According to research undertaken by Intel, rather than associating Core with Intel, people were associating “i5” and “i7” with it. Adding to this, Hirsch said, “Does ‘I’ represent Apple with iPhone and iPod? Was it simply an unknown? That was one of the costs of people not knowing they’re our products.”
Hirsch further contended, “But after dropping the “i,” you can’t shorten the name as easily. People won’t walk around saying ‘I bought a seven.’” Intel’s brand strategist, Tim Thaves, suggests that people will refer to the new lineup as Core 7 or Ultra 7, and this is going to help the company divide the flagship parts from the mainstream ones. However, he also noted that as far as Intel is concerned, “Ultra” does not refer to better speed, style, or luxury, so this analogy might not come off as perfect.
As reported by the Verge, though Hirsch and Thaves cannot say much about their Ultra products, it should be noted that the products will have “bigger feature sets with Arc-level graphics integrated into the processor that you won’t see on any products in the mainstream Core space.” The product may also have AI capabilities like those of AMD and Apple, along with a promise of “absolute best performance.”
Hirsch says that before, the question was about if a person is an “i7 or i9 guy,” but now the question is, “Are you an Ultra buyer, or are you a Core buyer?” According to reports, the Meteor Lake series represents “an inflection point in Intel’s client processor roadmap.” It is the first processor that will be built out of the Intel 4 processor node. Further, it is going to be the first chip that uses Foveros advanced 3D packing technology to deliver improved power and efficiency.
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Talking about the new branding, Caitlin Anderson, Intel’s vice president of Client Computing Group Sales, said, “To better align with our product strategies, we are introducing a branding structure that will help PC buyers better differentiate the best of our latest technology and our mainstream offerings.”
