Microsoft has revealed that their long-standing Internet Explorer (IE) web browser will be deprecated in favor of the technology being developed for their new web browser codenamed Project Spartan. Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela discussed this announcement at the Convergence 2015 conference.
The central purpose behind Capossela’s session was to discuss how the company is utilizing modern marketing techniques to better serve their business objectives. So while his talk wasn’t a formal introduction of the “new IE”, it is instructive as it outlines the direction Microsoft is going with their naming methodology. According to Capossela, Project Spartan should be considered the successor application to IE and will be introduced with Windows 10. IE as we know it today will continue to exist in some fashion (as yet undefined by Capossela or Microsoft) but for the typical end-user Project Spartan will be the preferred Microsoft application for browsing the web.
Microsoft has not released the official name for Project Spartan, but Capossela discussed how Microsoft is shifting their corporate branding to include “Microsoft” in more of their product names because doing so resonates better with users according to their research. When surveying users to gauge their reaction to possible names, including “Microsoft” in the title scored greater acceptance than the prospective product name alone. (Both candidates scored higher than the current Internet Explorer; the survey was conducted with current Chrome users in the United Kingdom.) Examples of other recent products using this convention include Microsoft HoloLens and Microsoft Surface Hub.