The difference between AirFryer and air fryer

I see a lot of confusion regarding this term, both online and speaking to people about oil less fryers in general, so I thought I will explain the differences between these two terms for those who might be interested.

May consider them synonyms, however “AirFryer” and “air fryer” are two different things.

Air fryer – “air fryer” is a cooking mechanisms by which a cooking device manages to cook food by circulating hot air around it, very much like a convection oven. There are “air fryers” of many shapes and sizes manufactured by a whole bunch of different brands which all have the same thing in common, they cook using hot air.

AirFryer – “AirFryer” on the other hand is the name that Philips decided to give their first air fryer. AirFryer is product name trademarked by Philips. So you can’t have an T-fal AirFryer or a BIG BOSS AirFryer. The AirFryer is a Philips product and Philips only.

Now naming their appliance AirFryer was a very smart move from the Philips marketing team to get the general public confused and talking about their appliance even without knowing it. By naming their appliance like this what Philips is looking for is to become what they call a “standard”, which seems to be working so far since people are calling the Philips AirFryer competitiors, AirFryers.

This isn’t the first time Philips has pulled something like this out. Actually their marketing techniques are studied in all marketing schools, which is no surprise considering they managed to spread the term “Gillette” as a synonym for “razor” across the globe and we now ask for a “Gillette” at the convenience store, even if we are not looking for that particular brand.

Will people walk into a store 20 years from now and ask for an “AirFryer” referring to Philips competitors? Only time will tell, but so far it looks like their marketing efforts are paying off!

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