Palm has just released a couple of new products whose names indicate a shift in brand strategy. The new names, “Zire” and “Tungsten,” display a move toward branding the actual products, rather than just the corporate name.

Previously, Palm’s devices all had inspiring names like “IIIxe” and “M505,” which is the same naming strategy employed by the likes of Mercedes, Audi, BMW and Jaguar – most of the brand equity goes to the company, and very little to the product.

Research in Motion (RIM) has taken the opposite tack by dubbing their product “Blackberry,” a truly great name which quickly eclipsed its corporate birth mother. This makes sense for wireless devices, because the technology and features change so quickly, functionality and price play a much bigger role than in the luxury car market. However RIM should be doing a better job of building its corporate brand as well.

The wall that RIM has hit is that with Blackberry such a tough act to follow, it has chosen not to try, and is assigning model numbers to the newer Blackberry units, a la Blackberry 6710. Soon “RIM” will fade from memory, and everyone will assume “Blackberry” is the corporate name, and the company will be in the same hole that Palm is timidly climbing out of right now.

Remember what happened to the brand equity of the company that brought you QuickBooks and TurboTax? It’s called…? Apple is an example of a company that successfully builds brand equity in its individual products AND in the Apple name at the same time; one is never eclipsed by the other, and in fact, the product and company names support each other very well.