No iPhone 9, No Windows 9: Why Apple and Microsoft Are Ignoring Them
Considering that every year major tech brands tend to renew their products, there are many of them that follow a sequence of numbers. For example, iPhone and Windows.
However, speaking of the two big companies behind it, Apple and Microsoft, they have decided to break this rule in a way that leaves a question on everyone’s lips: Why hasn’t the iPhone 9 or Windows 9 been released? But it seems that the answer in this case goes further than that.
When Apple introduced the iPhone, the jump from the iPhone 8 to the iPhone X, even though it was essentially the iPhone 10, was seen as a reinvention of the smartphone concept and a symbolic decision to name the new device in honor of its 10th anniversary. Microsoft, for its part, had its own reasons for jumping from Windows 8 to Windows 10. Windows 8 didn’t appeal to users as they expected, and the company needed to distance itself from that image. Additionally, there was concern that Windows 9 could be confused with older versions of Windows 95 and 98 in some code.
According to Microsoft, when they planned to release after Windows 8, they wanted to show the public that it had changed and had a big difference in its features and benefits. So they chose to go straight to number 10 as a marketing strategy.
As you can see, this isn’t a matter of superstition or random changes, it’s a carefully planned marketing strategy. By dropping a number, the companies created a sense of anticipation and curiosity. It was a way of saying, “This is something completely new, something that deserves its own category.”
Simply put, for Apple, the iPhone and Microsoft, for their part, wanted Windows 10 to feel like a completely new operating system, not just another update.
What did this ultimately achieve? Exactly what they were looking for. Both the iPhone X and Windows 10 were more in the news, following the expectations of millions of users who couldn’t stop commenting on the new features that were coming. And for these companies, they certainly didn’t disappoint either.