Exclusive: Microsoft's Metro branding to be replaced ‘this week’ according to internal memo
Microsoft is killing off the use of its Metro design name to describe a tiled interface in Windows Phone and Windows 8. We brought you news of the change earlier today, but a tipster has provided …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Metro rename lands at the worst possible moment for Microsoft's marketing machine: Windows 8 hit the released-to-manufacturing milestone on August 1 and final code is already in OEM hands, so any name change ripples straight into launch packaging, retail signage, and developer assets weeks before ship. The Verge's report, picked up same-day by ZDNet, GeekWire, Forbes, the Telegraph, Computerworld, LAPTOP Magazine and The Next Web, points to a possible trademark dispute behind the retreat — though the internal-memo claim itself remains unconfirmed by Microsoft.
It is also not an isolated cut. Earlier this year Microsoft was already scrubbing legacy names out of Windows 8, retiring the Zune and Windows Live brands from the OS, and in January it replaced the long-running Mix developer conference with a new event. Dropping 'Metro' — the word that had become shorthand for the entire tiled design language across Windows Phone and Windows 8 — extends that consolidation drive to the most visible label of all.
First-order effects
- Developers are being advised to strip 'Metro' from app descriptions and store listings immediately, forcing last-minute copy changes across the Windows Store catalog right as submissions ramp toward the Windows 8 launch.
- Microsoft's own launch marketing for Windows 8 and Windows Phone needs a substitute term on compressed timeline, since the rename is slated for 'this week' against an OS already handed to OEMs.
Second-order effects
- OEM partners building Windows 8 hardware must rework retail boxes, in-store materials, and co-marketing assets to match whatever replaces Metro, adding cost and confusion to the biggest PC refresh cycle in years.
- A trademark-driven retreat pushes Microsoft toward blander, more legally defensible naming — which weakens the distinctive design-language branding that had differentiated Windows Phone against iOS and Android in carrier stores.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Microsoft is converging on a single Windows-centered brand architecture — Zune, Windows Live, and now Metro all folded away — trading beloved internal codenames for safer, more generic public vocabulary.
- Trademark exposure becoming a first-class constraint on interface naming signals that design-language brands now carry real legal balance-sheet weight, pushing large platform vendors toward pre-cleared, descriptive terminology over evocative codenames.
The trend: Microsoft is consolidating its sprawling product nomenclature around the Windows brand ahead of its 2012 relaunch, with trademark risk increasingly dictating what its most famous design terms are allowed to be called.