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Cisco Ditches Flip and $590 Million
darthcamaro writes "Remember the Flip? When Pure Digital Technology first came out with the device it was one of the hottest gadgets, providing users with an ultra-portable camcorder. Then Cisco came along and bought the Flip for $590 million in 2009. Now less than two years later, Cisco is throwing the money, 550 employees and the Flip out the door." Wired has an analysis of why Flip floundered. I hope this means I can find a AA-powered Flip UltraHD for $50 in a clearance bin.
...that the Flip was a flop?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I cannot be the only person here who thinks maybe that the company problem is that I was never aware of them?
Sit... Speak.... Shake.... Good Dog!
The article asserts that smart phones recorded just as well, making the Flip redundant. I go a step further and postulate that smartphones are frankly more convenient. I don't always grab my camcorder when I'm heading out the door just in case I see something awesome and film worthy on my way to work. But I absolutely have to have my cell phone. I do not leave home without it. And hey, if I happen to need to capture a few minutes of video on my phone, I have a 16 gig SSID chip in it AND I can just email the darn thing to myself and have it posted on YouTube or Twitter within ten minutes because of my data plan (something that even a wi-fi connected Flip phone couldn't do most places.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Probably. Unless you were planning on buying a few thousand of them a month. Many people were aware of them (as the were quite popular in their heyday). But if smart phones and digital cameras can also take movies that are just as good, why buy a dedicated, mediocre, video camera?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Ive seen videos shot from newer flips in low lighting that cell phone cameras and cheap flip knock off's just show as black. I never had one mainly because of no zoom, for kids messing around in the room and doing skateboarding tricks they were great. They should have figured that it would only take a few months for the market to be flooded with lower cost clones.
But I bought a Kodak Zi-6, which I'm still using. External memory and runs on two AA batteries. Flip was all self contained and not all that interesting, considering the limitations.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I was in the market for a small portable video camera when we had a baby on the way and was looking at the Flip. Then the iPhone 4 came out with HD recording and I got that instead and I'm glad I did, the video and photo's I shot with it are great for my purposes and it's always there in my pocket. They released a single purpose device just when multi-purpose ones were catching up on their area of expertise. Though break.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
In Chicago, they had a really cheesy advertising campaign that had adverts plastered all over CTA trains and stations for at least 6 months, probably a year. They should have taken all that advertising money and pooled it into some good interaction designers for an interface reboot. Besides, if it can't connect to the web, who cares about it. I remember seeing the adverts and predicting a massive failure, but I can't say I'm glad to see $600,000,000 wasted.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
As an owner of a flip, they only recorded; no pictures, no stop-motion available.
This is (slightly) offtopic, but I'll take the hit. It seems strange to me that digital still cameras and DSLR cameras don't offer webcam functions, at least I haven't found any that do. Thy typical have a much better sensor, lens and optical zoom than any dedicated webcam; can record high resolution video and connect as a USB device. So why is a USB webcam mode not incorporated?
I like how the Wired article calls its appearance "retro." I blame it on the click-wheel-inspired design. Man I hate the clickwheel, and always did. It's still polluting the design of non-Apple mp3 players to this day. Please, please give us real clickable buttons, far enough apart to operate through a jacket pocket.
Cisco bought TGV which made the best TCP stack for Win 3.x and which was making a fast stack for 95, then turned them into a cable modem lab... hmm, OK.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Anything with a 1394 will do a live video feed, and not that crappy mpeg compressed shit they fed over USB1.1.
Flip's chances certainly weren't helped by the fact that, on the one hand, point and shoots with substantially more competent optics have been creeping down in price and creeping up in video capability, and on the other, smartphones(while substantially more expensive) are increasingly seen as a default, and so offer almost as good video recording for "free".
However, it really doesn't help that Cisco did surprisingly little with the company after they acquired it, and some of what they did do was questionable. The 'Slide' model was rather pitiful, their experiments in replacing the simple tried and true physical buttons with (lousy) touchscreens were failures, and they stuck with a price tag that was always hovering dangerously close to more capable devices. Other than a few incremental spec bumps there was almost no development of the product line for two years.
Same here...
I got both a 10mp Still and full HD Camcorder, yet for a webcam I'm stuck with a grainy 1.3mp webcam.
Nobody wants video conferencing... Heck people don't even want to *speak* to each other. There is no mass market in it...EVER... Every company who tries fails...
And people are not stupid... if they want video conferencing they'll buy a $60 web cam and use skype or MSN for free...
The mass market will NOT accept hundreds of dollars on hardware and recurring fees to use a service that does not need to exist on top of that.
Who wants to pay monthly for the priv
I was watching QVC this weekend and they were selling Flips (in a bundle with a at-home media streamer device) for a sale price of $150, down from $250 . Someone is trying to dump lots of product line.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Well, Cisco flipped Flip the birdy...
In Chicago, they had a really cheesy advertising campaign that had adverts plastered all over CTA trains and stations ...
So the target demographic for the product was riders of public transit?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"it was one of the hottest gadgets"
I think in this case it was you and not the product or the advertising. I bought one for myself and even gave them out as Christmas presents. I did a lot of research and was trying to find a super simple HD camera for grabbing shots. I couldn't find one as good so I grabbed a Flip and I've been thrilled with it and use it all the time. My brother in law is a professional photographer and the he uses the Flip I gave him constantly as the family camera even though he has far better cameras. The point is they are fast to use and take great video. I'll pick up several while they are in stores and pack them away for the future. It's sad that such a great product gets dropped.
Flips were durable as hell. I gave one to my 10 year son a one and over the years it has twice spent 1+ weeks in the yard in rain and snow and both times it started right up no problem. Not bad and absolutely perfect for a kid into making movies.
The company was understandably miffed about having people going into their local drugstore and buying what would have been a $50-100 gadget for $30. Pretty neat devices. Very lightweight, and rugged as hell. At $30, perfect for strapping onto balloons, kites, and model rockets.
Miffed as they were about the disruption of the business model, they actually didn't get overly litigious about it. They didn't have much of a legal leg to stand on, so they basically asked really really nicely for people to stop, while updating their single-use devices to be a little harder to hack. (It took the community a couple of years to crack the newer firmware, and by that time, the devices, even at $30, were obsolescent.)
The "reusable video camcorder that offers 2-3 times the quality, a zoom lens, and 30 minutes of storage" version of the single-use device became the series known as the Flip. The Flip was an unencumbered version of the grocery store disposable units, featuring more storage and higher resolution, and even at retail prices, if you needed something rugged, lightweight, cheap to power, and still cheap enough that it's not the end of the world if the rocket gets stuck in a tree or your RC aircraft faceplants into the dirt, it was still pretty good value for the money.
My department got one of these as a "Free gift" from one of our vendors. I opened the box, had no idea what it was... it actually took me a good 10min to figure it out on the internet. Then I saw the price was $200 or so... My coworkers and I sat around staring at it wondering why on earth anyone would want one. It's NOT a camcorder, doesn't record video nearly as well, but costs about the same. It's not a smartphone... or even a PDA. The USB plug "Flipped" out giving the device its name... but it was part of the hardware. When you plugged it into the computer you had this giant device hanging off your USB port. If you had any sort of mass-produced workstation like we all had at work, it was nearly impossible to actually plug the stupid thing in because the plug wasn't flexible and our USB ports were about an 1/8" off our desks.
I'm not sure why CISCO bought them, I'm hoping for some codec or patent rights or something. Otherwise that product was a total failure.
So why is a USB webcam mode not incorporated?
Same reason they don't have a bajillion other software features that they could easily incorporate for little or no programming cost: Marketing. The Marketing suits either didn't bother with the cost benefit analysis of your particular pet feature (a USB webcam mode), or they did and found that it wasn't worth the $x to develop, document, and support it. And of course they are too afraid to adopt an open source model.
If your camera or DSLR supports an open source firmware such as Magic Lantern or CHDK, then one may be able to add the feature themselves.
In any case, if your camera/DSLR has component video out (many do), then all you need is a $30 USB video capture device and you're in webcam business (though you may or may not have or notice latency issues).
It will happen eventually, but sooner than we think.
In the meantime Apple and friends will get rich
selling millions of disposable devices to the eager masses.
I can't defend this product. I can't justify it's existence. I can't possible fathom the price of the company or the product.
Even MS kin had more going for it.
Anything with a 1394 will do a live video feed.
That's good advice, but it's important to note that it has to be capable of SD DV over 1394. HDV over 1394 wont cut it for a webcam, because it trails by 15 or more frames in order to GOP compression. (I've even seen some SD over firewire with a noticeable latency). If it can switch between modes (I would hope that most can) it should be fine.
In any case, DV over 1394 is losing big to solid state AVC camcorders these days. In that case, the only option is one of the other outputs (coax, s-video, composite, component, etc.) which are often live (and uncompressed).
I almost got my wife a Flip this past Christmas as a more convenient way to take videos of our 2yr old without having to haul around a full fledged camcorder. I ended up getting her the Kodak Playsport instead. It was less expensive (think I paid about $120), it is waterproof (major plus since little ones have a tendency to spill things), and the reviews were better. The wife loves it, and the 1080p videos are MUCH, MUCH better than what either of our phones can do (even on the highest setting). The only negative is sharing the videos. While they play just great on the device (connected to our TV over HDMI), most PCs struggle with the video due to the high resolution. I have convert the videos to lower resolution if we want to share them with family/friends.
does the camera in this phone look familiar?
The flip camera is used in their unified IP phones. They didn't buy it to keep it going as standalone camera.
You've probably heard of them at some point. (Maybe because I'm a bit of a camera geek I'm more aware.) Early this decade they first came on /.'s radar with the Dakota disposable digital camera. A $10 ($20 if you wanted a preview LCD) camera that had to be returned to the store for processing (for additional cost.)
Shortly after they came out with a video version for $30 + processing. Both sound silly today, but back then digital cameras and camcorders were still fairly pricey. Both were quickly hacked and put to use in various projects ... to spare the innocent from further slashdotting, you can go googling for people who sent these into the upper atmosphere.
I'm a little bummed to see Flip getting dumped, (though I was surprised when I saw the Cisco logo when I bought mine.) Hope someone picks it up; it's a nice no-frills camera. Press the big red button to start, press again to stop, operation is simpler than even most point & shoot cameras ... I just handed my technonoob mom mine this morning when I heard the nieces were coming over, so I'll truly find out just how simple it is.
Still not as braindead as umi.
A device that could be replaced by skype and a 50 webcam (ok, so that's not as premium, but it is good enogh).
Now the stupid part, if you choose our product, you'll get to pay $25/month for access to less people.
This means, to talk to a relative or a friend, you are looking at $50/month, and these are people that already have internet (and therefor presumably compters). I have seen some real computer illiterates figure out skype, so I don't think they even have ease of use going for them.
If they had focussed on compatibility it may have made sense, selling it as skype your while living room or get on the elite high definition umi network (for free), but charging (a lot at 25/month) for pretty much what everyone already had access to for free (skype) is pretty much the most bone-headed business plan I can imagine.
The flips were at least cheap enough to use as semi-disposable cameras at the low end.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I've got a Canon EOS 550d DSLR camera, and I'm pretty sure it has got a web cam sort of function in the software somewhere.
Okay, to me this just sounds like a business plan waiting to fail. If the marketing dept (or whatever dept that comes up with these ideas) should listen to their engineers only once, it would be to present the business plan to the engineers and ask "now, what would you do as a consumer?" If the engineers are worth anything, they will point out holes (like "not return it and just download the data myself") before the marketeers go off on a quixotic quest to try to dupe people out of their money. I mean, honestly, did they actually think people *liked* having to take their cameras/film back to the store just to get the photos? And pay for the "privilege"? There's two reasons one hour photos are virtually non-existent anymore, and they're called USB and digital cameras.
No, that's not understandable; sounds like a just another bunch of MBA types trying to get rich quick by holding people's data ransom.
Nathan's blog
Maybe you need to look around a little more. For example, look at the camcorder section of Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/photo/172421). Flip currently has the #2 best selling camcorder at Amazon, plus they hold another 6 spots in the top 20.
and this makes sense. When they were getting acquired they were dumping tons of cash into looking like the hot shit for cisco, but I think they all knew the concept would get eaten alive by convergence. The mood I felt was, lets sell this to Cisco before they catch on that this market is doomed.
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
I've used one of these and I wasn't sure what to make of it. It's supposed to be a camcorder but it doesn't pick up audio very well unless the source is near the device. So then you think it would be good for video blogging on the go, but models don't have a screen to see if you're in frame. Some say smartphones did in the Flip, but when it first came out, cheap digital cameras were already able to do what the Flip did and more (and with better quality), in addition to being expandable with SD card memory. If it was cheaper, then maybe it would have succeeded...
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
of course not.
the ceo will, after wasting 600 million or so of the shareholders money on a flashy product with no future, will get a bonus for shutting it down.
the shareholders put up with it, they deserve what they get.
Bugger, this is the first time I've backed an unsuccessful technology since I bought a DAT recorder in 1992. Still, it'll keep working for me. The Flip has surprisingly excellent picture quality, good storage time (I have the 16GB Mino model with 2 hours capacity) and is super easy to use and integrate with other things - laptop, AV system, etc. Sad to see it now considered a 'flop'.
Can't be the only person that's bummed out by this can I? I have six of the second generation flip cameras that I use to record bands I play with. I was waiting to upgrade those cameras to the wifi version that hit the FCC in january, but now I guess I'm gonna snap up the current version on amazon.
From Cisco's FAQ about the acquisition:
Q. How will Pure Digital’s products be sold and serviced?
A: For the time being, Pure Digital will continue to sell their product as they do today, on the web, via retail stores and through on-line retailers. Together Cisco and Pure Digital will work to expand sales opportunities for these exciting products.
Q. How will Cisco and Pure Digital customers be affected by the acquisition?
A: Cisco often acquires companies that can accelerate the development of a product, technology or platform. With Pure Digital, Cisco acquires consumer-friendly video products and technology, as well as a brand with mass-market appeal. Pure Digital customers will continue to receive the same great products and technology they are accustomed to receiving and will experience no negative impact in terms of features or service.
So much for truth in marketing.
Breakfast served all day!
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/flounder.html
But now what is woot.com going to sell?
Intriguing.... Are revenue/expense numbers for the flip dept publicly available?
Chambers is right that flip meshed with Cisco's core business (of charging eye-popping markup).
I've not seen anyone here talking about Cisco's CORE products: Switches and routers.
Right now, Cisco is seriously missing on 10G networking. Their products suck ass compared with Juniper and Arista. Others have really great stuff out there too right now (Brocade, Extreme, Force 10).
They totally bailed out of Infiniband because their products were poop. It's a small market, but we use it here because of HPC.
The simple fact is that shortly after when Cisco shipped their 3750-E switches Juniper shipped their EX 4200 series switches. Juniper was: cheaper, had redundant power supplies, bigger uplink bandwidth, and mops cisco all over on features AND reliability.
Cisco had to come out with the 3750X series, which is a nice upgrade with a price drop, but still isn't as good because of the software.
Also, their ASA firewalls really suck. We've got a bunch of their big 5580-40s here, which were the biggest thing they had at the time. They crash often, management ain't that great, and cost-wise is like hitting yourself in the head with a gold hammer.
Cisco is in serious serious trouble. Stupid acquisitions are the least of their problems.
correction:
Chambers is right that flip *never* meshed with Cisco's core business (of charging eye-popping markup).
Big corporation buys innovative, useful device, fucks it up. Something that could develop into something great, gets bogged down in development in corporate machine.
capitalism doesnt solve any issues of organization size. it just rationalizes them.
Read radical news here
The camera on the 9000 series phones is nothing like a flip phone. It's simply a USB web cam, that plugs directly into the phone. It's not HD, and it doesn't have very good optics. They didn't need to spend $500mil for that.
and I don't regret it a bit. Pretty close to a perfect camera for a 13 year old. It's customized with her own design so she thinks it is the coolest thing in the world. Video quality is excellent and gets scaled down for youtube anyway.
As a geek I'm not impressed by it but I wasn't the target market. Cisco screwed up with their newer slide model. Added complexity without any real features.
Should be a few years before the kid outgrows this camera and I need to get her something more advanced. Would have been nice to get it at a bargain price like most will now but I still think it was worth the cost.
Just bought one this morning. Damn, I knew I should have gone with the buggy whip instead!
My Canon 7D has got HDMI out. They also provide software so you can view video, and control the camera remotely, via USB. Can't remember if it has webcam mode or not.
But whats the point...I mean, why? There may be some legitimate reasons to have the DSLR function as a webcam but they're edge cases. Webcams tend to be for person to person video conferencing where the small webcam form is most important over quality. For those wanting to high quality video you can capture through HDMI on a DSLR and then do what you want with the stream.
A guy has an idea of what he can commit the resources he commands to. The company spends a shitload of money to do so. A new guy comes in or a superior decides it's time to assert dominance. They have to make their mark to show they are going to do something different. The easiest way is to cancel what the first guy did which has the advantage that it also robs them of a success. The actual idea or implementation is irrelevent.
That's the sort of bullshit we are training our MBAs to do - teaching them to act like barbarian feudal lords only without any of the sort of skills that were needed at any time in history to get to a position of responsibility (eg. getting rotated around bits of the company to find out what it does - not going directly from running a tiny nuclear research lab to a huge telecommunications company in one disasterous step). They get a prize instead of a job they can do. In a lot of cases they are destined to be victims of those that actually know what the company they run does and do not waste so much time on petty political games.
Because that costs money and doesn't make any sense. In the $100-$300 P&S market, adding cost to your device to compete against $20 webcams puts you a competitive disadvantage in seriously cutthroat segment of the market. In the $300-600 P&S/Compact market, you could probably put such a mode in and get away with it... but who is going to buy it? That's the entry level for the serious photographer and videographer. Above that, in the compact/SLR range - you're going to be even worse shape as going to the effort to add webcam functionality to semi-pro cameras is going to be regarded as taking away effort from improving the photography and videography functionality.
TFA missed a very important reason: no SD expansion slot.
Every single time I saw them on a store first thing I did was check if there was a way to expand memory with SD card. Nope?... well, ain't buying it then.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
Some say smartphones did in the Flip, but when it first came out, cheap digital cameras were already able to do what the Flip did and more (and with better quality), in addition to being expandable with SD card memory.
I'm not sure that is exactly true. My 2007 vintage P&S did have better optics, including optical zoom, but video was stored inefficiently and for limited duration as motion JPEG. That meant there was some advantage to using the Flip for longer but less demanding video. Pretty weak market position though, and it's totally gone now. Current P&S cameras record H.264
1/2 Billion is a LOT of router and switch sales to make up.
Apparently, you haven't seen the price of Cisco products lately. ;-)
Besides, if it can't connect to the web, who cares about it.
People who just want adequate quality home video of their kids, family, holidays, pets and so on, and don't intend to share it with the whole fucking world on bastard Facebook?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The point is they are fast to use and take great video. I'll pick up several while they are in stores and pack them away for the future. It's sad that such a great product gets dropped.
What you describe is exactly why we bought them for ourselves as well.
Its also exactly why ours haven't been used since the iPhone 4's video camera came out. Sure, the phone is missing image stabilization (btw, WTF Apple) and the quality isn't quite as good, but those facts are well-mitigated by the fact that I always have it with me... exactly the same thought process used to justify the Flip vs. an HD-capable-SLR.
Anyone who could make the leap from complex->Flip will, or has, made exactly the same leap from Flip to celphone, with a few exceptions (we still use a Flip for recording corporate video-blog footage, for example).
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I got one for my wife and it had the worst USB interface EVER. The weight of the camera would pull it out of the port, and it was just a royal PITA to use.
DIE, mf, die!
The device lacked basic camcorder features - like an optical zoom. It didn't do anything that my camera phone can do - so why would I buy it? In the meantime, I have shelled out money for a smartphone, a decent near-SLR still camera, and an HD Camcorder with a good optical zoom, image stabilization,etc. There is no place in my closet for a Flip.
I think I'll carry around a single use device that does not cost me $30 a month, thank you very much.
If you cancel your cell phone service.. you can still use the hardware (camera). Sort of renders your argument invalid...
Guesses:
1. You need an external power supply.
2. Most web cameras are modest in their data requirements. Can you imagine how much your ISP would love you if you had an HD camera on your bird feeder?
It is an interesting point, however. Many cameras can be used in 'teathered' mode where a computer pulls data off the camera as fast as it's generated. My DSLR doesn't do video, so I don't know if tethered video is a possibility.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
This niche has already been taken over by GoPro Video Cams. (I don't work for them and don't own one.) These things were all over the slopes this winter. I saw a lot of them attached to the end of ski poles being used to shoot both the owner and other boarders or skiers. Shooting Junior doing something cute in the house is fine with your smart phone, but out in the real, messy world, I want something a bit more rugged and waterproof. A hundred bucks for the SD model, and $180 for the HD version. Add another hundred for the versions that attach to your surfboard, ski helmet, motorcycle, submarine, etc. Shoots 1080P at 30fps. SD card memory expansion. Very cool device in my opinion.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
So then I've got a lower resolution video camera that I paid more for? How does that make sense?
Erm. I wouldn't call them "mediocre". I own a 14MP Sony digital camera, as well as a Flip Mino HD. Both do 720p video, but the video quality on the Flip Mino is much better. I seriously doubt most smartphones could even remotely compete. The thing can take pretty good video both in near darkness and in very loud environments. I've used it to take clips in nightclubs which came out quite good. I routinely use it to film my video blogs and have few complaints (although it does have some design flaws).
I think the truth is that this product is not that well known, and the average Joe will be satisfied with the video quality from a digital camera. Won't want to buy a second dedicated device that's just as expensive as a whole second digital camera so they can get potentially better video quality... Especially since it's pretty hard to judge the video quality in a store, looking at the video only on the device's display. Then you have the other problem that the Flip Mino doesn't look like your "traditional" camcorder. Customers looking specifically for a camcorder might just shell more on a "reputable" $500+ camcorder-looking device from Sony, rather than something small and "toy-like" from a brand they never heard of.
Plug it into a USB extension lead or external hub.
I remember an interview from a manager saying that Flip's strong point was "ease of use", and then he proudly added that the new Flip would be HD. .. it was still missing motion compensation! A feature which would improve the videos while keeping the "ease of use".
But
HD improves the videos too, sure, but it isn't easy to use: it has the side effect of making the vidoes more difficult to share and to more difficult to edit (need a more powerful PC), that's when I realised that they didn't capitalize on their strong point
so they were very likely to fail..