People walk into BMW dealerships and wrap their heads around the 3 series, the 4 series, the 5, and 7 series etc. Each with their own confusing combinations of models numbers (535xi etc.) And BMW is even making it harder for folks with the new-ish even models (4, and 6 series).

If you hammer it over consumers heads long enough, people will learn your crazy naming schemes. I don't think Nokia has that kind of time.

Yes, but the 3-series, 5-series and 7-series are all cars. In particular, they are luxury cars of increasing size available in saloon/estate versions.

The Lumia 7879 tablet and Lumia 347334 smartphone are different things and 347334 > 7879 does not hold, or make any sense.

Actually, traditionally people have always talked about Nokia phones in terms of numbers. 6300, 3310, 1200, 1208, N95... Sure it's kinda difficult for new comers etc, but i guess at one point Nokia was big enough to have the luxury of everyone knowing their products by numbers. Though, as you point out, they should consider a better nomenclature, especially now that they aren't that prevalent anymore.

I agree there is no problem using numbers within a category (though it's still ugly) but across categories I think it's madness.

Even washing machine manufacturers tend to have some letter prefix to their product codes to distinguish between a washing machine and a toaster.

Oh, i see what you mean. I overlooked that (and apparently so did Nokia ppl). Using Lumia for a phone AND a tablet is just confusing...

Samsung Uses "Galaxy" with multiple categories, but they also add "Tab" or "S" to distinguish. Nokia should consider that.

Nokia's lines have always been segmented like this. See N-series or phones like 1100, 3210, 5610 etc. These tell the affordability and luxury "rating" of the phone. Some 6-7 years back when I was purchasing my phone, I had a budget hence knew which series would be affordable to me. (Albeit I settled on an abomination of a phone like 3250)

Although I concur Apple has the best approach definitely.