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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.
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.
The brilliance of this is that even if the Flip itself flops, Cisco still wins in the long run. As long as the Flip and the insane marketing hype surrounding it increased the popularity of HD video sharing on the web, people are going to need more routers in the network itself. I wonder who the ISPs and YouTubes of the world will be going to then...
Cisco never needed to sell the Flip as a physical product, they just needed to sell the idea of shooting LOTS of video and sharing it across the web. It seems like they've succeeded.
-twb