In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) CEO John Chambers says that he wants to build his router company into a force in the consumer electronics field. That is probably not a good idea.

Chambers reasons that his router business will continue to grow at low double digits for several years. Mostly driven by supplying telecom and cable companies with infrastructure, Cisco made $2.2 billion in its last reported quarter on revenue of $8.9 billion.

But, the company does own the Linksys WiFi product and the Scientific Atlanta set-top business. It hopes to re-brand these with the Cisco name. This would put the company up against the largest set-top provider, Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) General Instruments division. It would also put Cisco into the home networking business that has chewed up and spit out companies from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). Dozens of companies are trying to make money as the hub of home entertainment and connectivity.

It would be a long and very hard war for Cisco. It should stick to its knitting.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

As reported by Melly Alazraki here at BloggingStocks yesterday, the Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone was scooped by Linksys! Bloggers and rumor sites had all but resigned the world to the fact that the Apple iPod/cellphone would be called the iPhone, and yesterday's bombshell announcement that Linksys will have an iPhone that uses wireless networks to do VOIP sends everyone worrying about what will happen next from Apple.

ZDNet thinks that Apple may be gearing up for an iPhone trademark battle, as Apple rushed to file for the iPhone trademark in Eastern markets. ZDNet cites more evidence that this may be the case. A battle like that would bring a great deal of publicity to both camps and their products.

This might deter some investors who are with Apple solely for the iPod surge, but it still looks likely that some hardware will still come out. What is likely is that Apple will have to do a last minute name change. But what will that be? The iCellphone? The iCell? What do you think Apple will name it?

Oh, how we waited. Oh, what a disappointment. The long awaited iPhone was finally launched today but it was nothing like what we've expected.

Apple Computer Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) long rumored mobile phone, or the iPhone as it has been dubbed, was not launched today.

Instead, Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), launched its VoIP phone, the iPhone. Reading the press release announcing the Linksys iPhone is odd as the constant mention of the Linksys iPhone sounds somewhat out of place.

So it seems that Cisco already owns the iPhone trademark. Bloggers around the Internet are wondering if that would hurt the launch of Apple's mobile phone.

However, if you remember before Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) came out with its online payment service, Google Checkout, almost everybody called it GBuy. It didn't seem as if the name change hurt Google Checkout much. Granted, the iPhone was much more hyped, but a name change at the last minute could even add to the hype.