The INQUIRER Top 10 defunct brands

YOU MIGHT HAVE SEEN today that Cisco's hubris has meant that the Linksys brand bites the dust in what is a dumb move all round.

Cisco would like to think it is a megabrand but outside the sheltered world of B2B it's not and Linksys had some reach. Mammy doesn't know Cisco, Daddy doesn't know Cisco, Uncle Howard doesn't know Cisco. Grandad knows Cisco Houston. Nanna says she went there once. Cisco has zip in consumer awareness. Nowt. Nada. Nish. www.naffall.com.

Maybe somebody high up, even John Chambers himself, said, “Hey, the world knows Cisco”, and nobody had the cojones to differ.

Wrong. But Cisco's not the first and won't be the last. We can think of, oh, 10 brands that were surplus to requirements…

10. Ambra. When mail-order PCs started to hit, IBM came up with this name and shifted plenty of boxes… then dumped it, together with ValuePoint, the IBM sub-brand that was also going swimmingly. Big Blue eventually sold off its PC business to Lenovo after years of explaining huffily why it was still strategic.

9. Apricot. Mitsubishi paid out plenty to get its hands on the UK's premium PC brand shortly before commoditisation made it worth not very much. Eventually, Mitusbishi dumped the Apricot brand, then dumped the PC business.

8. ICL. A bit like the Mitsubishi-Apricot combination in that Japanese giant Fujitsu bought UK stalwart ICL and kept the name going until it meant next to nothing. At least ICL had a services, software and legacy server business.

7. OfficeVision. This was IBM's line of beacons telling your company how to do office automation. Then, when IBM bought Lotus for Notes, it quietly slipped away.

6. Compaq. The name still sort of exists but it's way down HP's list of priorities even though the brand had top-dollar marketing campaigns behind it, such as Formula One racing marques.

5. Newton. Fell like a piece of bruised fruit once Apple realised it had built a turkey.

4. Handspring. Somersaulted out of our minds once Palm bought its clone maker.

3. Psion. Had a superb PDA franchise but pretty much called the brand quits once it threw its hat into software with Symbian.

2. Digital. Subsumed in the chaos of HP-Compaq-Tandem. We no longer need debate whether its DEC or Digital.

1. Ashton-Tate. It was a sign of the times when Borland bought its old database rival. Now even knowing the name marks you down as an oldie, along with Microsoft acquisition FoxBase. µ