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Cisco To Challenge iPad With Cius 'Business Tablet'
GMGruman and several other readers noted Cisco's announcement of the forthcoming 7-inch Android-based iPad challenger, the Cius, which "... will offer multiple networking capabilities, keyboard and mouse support, and the ability to do videoconferencing. Cisco says it will cost less than $1,000, or about the same as an iPad. The Cius will come with a front-facing high-definition video camera that can record 720p video at 30 frames per second and a 5-megapixel camera at the back that can capture high-quality video and still images. Users will be able to engage in live video calls [most likely via WebEx] when the tablet is docked or being held. Some units will be available this fall, though general availability is not expected until early 2011."
"Under $1k' (read $999) is what everyone thought the iPad would sell for.
But actually it's half that much, $500 for the base model (which I have and is fine).
It is interesting though they seem to be aiming this at video conferencing users, it could be a lot easier to set up and use than existing solutions.
Until the iPad 2 with Facetime comes out that is... 2011 seems like Cisco is cutting it close.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is completely bizarre. Cisco doesn't have a history of making consumer grade products. And they decide to dive in with an Android tablet? WTF?
They could probably duplicate the hardware, but I doubt Cisco could make anything like iOS.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Why would Cisco use Android? If they seriously want to compete with the iPad, they need to make it run ios.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
It's targeted to business users. Apple doesn't really enter into that market. So I could see this being a success.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
I would bet everything I could turn to cash that this will fail. As in: Will have the same or less impact on the iPad as mp3 players had on the iPod during the last 10 years.
That's some confident gambling, but I'll put the contents of my billfold on this getting scrapped before it ships. A thousand-dollar video-conferenceing device? Get two netbooks and a coupla six-packs; a much better video-conferencing experience for less!
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
I agree for the most part. Maybe I've been living under a rock for the past 10 years, but I'm not aware that Cicso has ANY deep user interaction / UI design and implementation skills in house, except for their recent purchase of MOTO, which seems like they have a couple, but not all the bases covered. Personally I give this a slim chance of any success, and I constantly wonder why these companies seem to want to push into areas far outside their core competency. Apple clearly has the design chops to move from a PC to a cell phone and a tablet, but I will be shocked it Cisco can move from their core business into a successful tablet. Personally I've been wondering why RiM doesn't go after this market since they seem to have a very good understanding of what strictly business users want in a mobile device.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Unless Citrix has some real aces up their sleeve, this one is exactly as dead in the water as Apple feels like making it, outside of a few big corporations where just repeating "Cisco, cisco, cisco" in a soothing voice makes management's eye's glaze over and fills them with an irresistable urge to sign purchase orders.
The iPad is a relatively mass-market consumer product, based on a weedy little ARM core(very closely shared with another mass-market consumer product they produce). No way will Cisco be beating them on price, unless they are willing to get hammered on margins. Further, it is a general-purpose computer, crippled only as much as Apple wants it to be(for instance, this Cisco thing supports a mouse and keyboard for doing remote desktop/virtual terminal stuff. If Apple felt threatened, they could have deals inked with Citrix and VMware for their thin-client computing protocols, plus RDP and X11 and maybe NX, all rolled up into an app inside a month(App slogan: "Tenfootpole: for when you need to work on a PC; but can't bear to touch one...). I'm guessing that support for bluetooth mice could be added to the present support for bluetooth keyboards in even less time, and made available privately to that app, so as not to slum up the "touch experience". If they were really feeling motivated, they could kick out a full desktop dock accessory(the camera connect kit shows that there is USB host support in there, so it would take about ten minutes to design a dock with a power brick and USB hub, that holds it at the right angle and lets you plug in your mouse, keyboard, and flash drive full of boring work.
Now, there is no evidence that Apple is thus motivated. If they don't find the corporate market interesting or sufficiently profitable, they just won't bother. Even so, announcing that you plan to release a product when your competitor already has a product that is one software update away from being cheaper and better than that product, seems like a rather dubious move. I certainly wouldn't want to be in Cisco's shoes here.
that is one software update away
I would like to see the software update that gives ipads front/back-facing video cameras...
-- the cake is a lie
Really, I was just thinking the opposite: it seems they've done a nice job choosing a different market segment to differentiate them, so they are not competing directly against the iPad. This is essentially what Apple did with the iPhone, they didn't go after business users like Blackberry was doing at the time.
Furthermore, they've already made a fairly large entrance into the teleconferencing market, so this is really just an extension of what they are already doing. If anyone could pull this off, I'd say it would be Cisco. At this point I'd give them an edge over Apple (in this market segment), but that could change if the device is released and it turns out to be a kludge.
Qxe4
Which one? Cisco IOS or Apple's iOS? Wait until a year or two from now and you're googling to solve a problem you're having with a switch or router and all you can find is info about iOS. Fun and Hilarity ensue :p
Lenovo's new Ideapad which will be out later this year:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/05/lenovo-ideapad-u1-hybrid-hands-on-and-impressions/
It was supposed to come out about now but they decided to replace the snapdragon OS with Android. I showed this to my manager, the IT staff and we all can't wait for it. Especially now that Android will be on it.
The price is supposed to be around 1K as well.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
If anyone could pull this off, I'd say it would be Cisco
I'm not real familiar with their teleconference stuff, but if it's like I remember it, it's a big jump from what they have to a general use business tablet. I'd like to be proven wrong as competition is good, but I just don't see it. Even if this thing is great at teleconferencing it will fail if it doesn't perform other business functions well. If it doesn't have a full exchange client and native support for PowerPoint it will be a complete failure. I mean, who are the users for this? it's not the average worker because the average worker has a desktop or a laptop which can be outfitted with a top of the line logitech webcam for $100 and companies aren't going to be handing out $900 devices to anyone below director level. It's not for conference rooms because most modern conference rooms have built in solutions for group conferencing. This is for executives, and if it can't replace a blackberry and a laptop for meetings they're not going to buy one except as a toy.
I think RiM and even Microsoft, if they can create a touch based UI, are the ones who could do a good job here. I mean, Microsoft did a pretty good job of the UI for the XBOX, they should be able to figures something out for this.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
If any of these companies learned anything at all from Apple, they wouldn't be announcing tablets to ship next year. They'd be announcing finished products that will be out this month. You can't build a product and aim at a moving target.
HP Slate with Windows 7? Dead, and HP bought Palm to recover. Lenovo Ideapad? Announced at CES, still not out, supposedly a new OS is coming. Cisco Cius? Looks cool, not out until next year.
iPad? Over 3 million of them shipped so far, they were in users' hands 10 weeks after they were announced, and by the time most of these competitors ship (if they do at all), Apple will have a second release of the shipping OS and may well have a second generation of the hardware out as well.
The only thing Apple's preannounced several months ahead of time in recent years was the original iPhone. For a reason - that froze the smartphone market for almost six months until the first one shipped.
Word to future iPad wannabes: Tell us about it when you're ready to ship. You're not going to freeze the market by announcing 6 months early. People aren't going to say "screw Apple, let's wait for the Cius to make tablets legitimate". You'll only look stupid when you don't ship the same product you announced 6 months ago.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
What if they load this sucker up with a special USB-to-RS232 for consoling, and a bunch of Cisco-made apps for plugging into CiscoWorks and other utilities network monitoring, remote management, VPN, and have it support similar 3G data networking?
If they toss one in with every order over $50k of network hardware, I think you'd be seeing these become standard Cisco enterprise management tools. All it has to do is interface with the other stuff Cisco sells, and it completely eliminates my need to haul a 15" laptop around for a console and network access.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Perhaps you're not aware that Cisco sells $500,000 videoconferencing rooms to the DoD? Augmenting that with a tablet seems like a no brainer. Maybe they'll even go ruggedized and have that niche to themselves.
E pluribus unum
Perhaps you're not aware that Cisco sells $500,000 videoconferencing rooms to the DoD?
Pointing out gov't waste doesn't help.
About the only useful comment in the thread so far.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Cius> enable t
...
Password:
Cius# conf t
Cius(configure)# addressbook
Cius(configure-addressbook)# phone bob 222-4343
^Z
Cius>dial bob
Cius>no dial bob
This is not an iPad killer. It's not meant to be one. I'm at Cisco Live right now and all the Cisco geeks are wetting themselves over it...but it's not even a competitor to the iPad. It's a niche product to work with Cisco's other technologies. Hospitals are going nuts over the iPad and Cisco wants a play in that market. They want these customers to buy the Cius just like they do Cisco wireless handsets now. Look at the promo pics, it's docked in a Cisco phone.
Different markets.
A typical good videoconferencing setup already is going to cost at least a couple thousands bucks. Furthermore, a meeting with 10 people who make $60k/year is already costing $30/hr*10 = $300/hr. If the iPad like device really improves usability or provides additional utility, then the company can get a lot of value out of their investment.
You're probably right, though perhaps not for the reasons you think.
The iPad is a horrible productivity tool, moving files between applications requires iTunes and jumping through a few dozen hoops, its bluetooth is crippled, iWork sucks, and the prohibitions on running interpreted code(at least without express Apple permission), cuts into a lot of the areas where productivity tools can be particularly useful. Last I checked the iTunes ToS expressly prohibits business use of apps anyway. There is a market for this thing if it performs even remotely well as a productivity tool.
The fundamental obstacle for a device like this is the way that businesses purchase company equipment. For the most part, your average employee is, if they're lucky, going to have to choose between this and a laptop, they won't get budget for both, and, while both could have a use, this thing would be easier to live without than a laptop. Executives on the other hand, can generally get whatever toys they want, but generally speaking only seem to want shiny toys. These folks will want an iPad because the iPad is cool, cool is what Apple sells and they're damned good at it(I think that both the iPad and the Macbook Air are pointless, but when I watch the ads for them even I hear the proverbial voice in the back of my head saying "oooooh shiny" and trying to turn off all rational thought.
Just about the only way that this will sell is if people who do actual work pay for it themselves, which just isn't likely to happen unless it's at least close to the iPad's performance in all the non productivity ways(which it won't be).
Depending on what they're using the room for and how many people are expected to be in it, 500k doesn't seem to be all that ludicrous. VC setups aren't exactly cheap, and if you want to be able to connect to multiple locations without an external bridge, encrypt the content, have enough cameras, microphones and screens to cover the room properly, have more than one person participate in the meeting, and generally have anything that is even remotely like having a meeting with everyone being in the same room, it's even more expensive.
Just because you can spend a couple of grand and stick a camera on top of your television set and make someone feel like they're not being totally excluded from the meeting doesn't mean it's a functional solution.
It's Android. The UI's already built.
I do not read or respond to AC's. If you want a discussion, log in. Otherwise, don't waste your time.
This is pretty much it. I worked for a media company that moved premises and scrapped the old VC setups. When I saw the pricing for the new ones I was amazed until I saw the setup. 8 mics embedded in the roof, projectors capable of 1080p, multiple cameras, encryption, electronic frosted glass, etc. All coming to about $100 000 per room.
$500 000 isn't too bad if it's speced to government standards. This Cius actually looks like it may make it to market and do well. It's kind of like saying that Blackberry should stop making devices because the iPhone is such a hit. I've supported executives who had a huge hissy fit to get an iPhone then they returned it a week later to go back to their Blackberry. I don't blame them personally, I like my iPhone but I know it's just not as usable for business as Blackberries are.
Apple's biggest problem is that Jobs is always pushing an agenda, and as a result crippling an amazing device. Does it really take that much space to include a SD card slot, a USB jack, or a webcam? (even my cell phone has all those). Is it really going to hurt the user experience to allow Flash or my own applications? The answer of course is no to all these.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Have you even looked for ruggerdised laptops recently?
I did some research for a couple of field engineers (Geo's) and they are all 12-14" tablet PC's with touchscreens. Also they are all around $5K so if Cisco entered this market with a ~1K device they'd clean up. Even the semi-ruggerdised ones are $1K more expensive then their non-ruggerdised counterparts but the Australian outback would kill a semi-ruggaerised device in a matter of days.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I genuinely see no advantages of the tablet shape in any case, unless maybe you work in inventory or something and you can hang it from your belt by a strap. I mean how do you carry it without the screen being scratched? Also keyboards are not additional complications, they are NECCESSARY to prevent greasy and/or fat fingers getting on the monitor and blocking what the monitor is meant to do. Its been tried before and failed, for good reasons, and once the Apple marketing spin fades away, so will the ipad.
I fully expect this to be modded down for no greater reason than some sucker wants to justify his purchase. Meh.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.