In an effort to capitalize on the Java brand, server and software company Sun Microsystems will change its stock ticker from SUNW to JAVA next week.
Sun is making the shift because Java has far greater brand awareness than the company’s name, said CEO Jonathan Schwartz in his blog on Thursday. The current symbol, which stands for Stanford University Network Workstation, reflects the company’s origins but not its present, he said.
“The number of people who know Java swamps the number of people who know Sun,” Schwartz wrote. “JAVA is a technology whose value is near infinite to the Internet, and a brand that’s inseparably a part of Sun (and our profitability).”
Sun estimates that 1 billion consumers recognize the steaming coffee cup symbol of Java, it said in a press release.
Using similar logic, Microsoft will soon be changing it’s stock symbol to BSOD an ‘innovation’ for which it is well known and that people associate with the MS name.