Why You Shouldn’t Name Your Tablet the ‘nPad’

Because Apple is already using the brand name iPad, two companies have tried to name their competitive tablets something completely different: The nPad.

Not recommended. Here’s why.

Red Flag Software Co, a Linux software developer in China, demonstrated a MeeGo-based tablet this summer called the NPad. (I guess they figured that capitalizing the first letter would throw Apple lawyers off the scent.) The NPad hardware looked nearly identical to iPad hardware. And the MeeGo software looks pretty similar to the iOS, too.

But last month, something unusual happened. Apple actually succeeded in shutting down what was probably the number one iPhone clone in China — the Meizu M8. The event threatened the existence of the Chinese phone maker, which went to unusual lengths to lovingly duplicate the iPhone look-and-feel using Windows CE 6.

That event may have silenced Red Flag. We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the NPad since the summer demo.

Fast forward to this week. A Dutch tablet maker had been selling a Windows 7 tablet first demonstrated at CEBIT and launched in the summer called — what else?– the nPad, when Apple used Dutch courts to prevent the company from using the name. Since then, the company’s web site has gone dark and the tablet is currently unavailable while the company goes hunting for a new brand name. Sure, they had only sold a few hundred units to business customers, but pulling the device off the market must be a painful loss of revenue.

The moral of the story is: Don’t name your tablet the fricken “nPad”!

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