• Why Cisco Really Killed the Flip Camera
    32 replies, posted
[url]http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/the-tragic-death-of-the-flip/[/url] [QUOTE=NY Times] Day before yesterday, my jaw hit the floor, and I still haven’t managed to get it back up again. Cisco is killing the Flip camcorder. Let’s see if I can get this straight: Only two years ago, Cisco bought Pure Digital, the company that made the Flip, for $590 million. Then, on Tuesday, Cisco announced that it’s shutting down the whole division and laying off 550 people. Humans are a rational species. Our instinct is to find reasons, to seek patterns where none may exist. In this case, everybody’s first reaction is: “Oh, it’s because of smartphones. Everybody’s shooting video with iPhones nowadays — nobody’s buying Flip camcorders.” Or, as Gizmodo puts it, “Cisco just axed Flip, yeah, but the blame should be aimed squarely at the smartphone in your pocket.” Which sounds logical — until you realize that it’s totally absurd. First, app phones like the iPhone represent only a few percent of cellphone sales. You know who buys app phones? Affluent, East Coast/West Coast, educated, New York Times-reading, Gizmodo-writing Americans. But most of the world doesn’t buy iPhones. Of the one billion cellphones sold annually, a few million are iPhones. The masses still have regular cellphones that don’t capture video, let alone hi-def video. They’re the people who buy Flip camcorders. It’s wayyyyyy too soon for app phones to have killed off the camcorder. Second, it isn’t true at all that nobody’s buying Flip camcorders. So far, seven million people have bought them. Only a month ago, I was briefed by a Flip product manager on the newest model, which was to hit the market Wednesday. He showed me a graph of the Flip’s sales; Flips now represent an astonishing 35 percent of the camcorder market. They’re the No. 1 best-selling camcorder on Amazon. They’re still selling fast. Look at it this way: There are plenty of Flip copycats, from Kodak and other companies. They have only a fraction of the Flip’s popularity, but you don’t see them shutting down. So why did Cisco kill off the flip? I’ve spoken to a bunch of people in the industry, trying, in my human way, to figure out the logic here. It seems clear that Cisco, whose primary focus is making networking equipment for businesses, was all excited about getting into the consumer electronics game; that’s why it spent $590 million on Flip. But then, as John Chambers, Cisco’s chief executive, put it, the company decided to make “key, targeted moves as we align operations in support of our network-centric platform strategy.” Which, in English, means, “We had no clue what we were doing.” All right, fine. Cisco bit off more than it could chew. But why is it killing the Flip and not selling it? The most plausible reason is that Cisco wants the technology in the Flip more than it wants the business. Cisco is, after all, in the videoconferencing business, and the Flip’s video quality — for its size and price — was amazing. Maybe, in fact, that was Cisco’s plan all along. Buy the beloved Flip for its technology, then shut it down and fire 550 people. You already know the first part of the tragedy. The Flip was a great product. Much simpler than a camcorder — the thing pretty much had only one button, Record/Stop — and also much simpler than an app phone. You’d have this thing filming instantly: no powering up, loading with tape, opening the screen, setting to Record mode, and so on. Then you’d pop out the built-in USB connector to transfer the footage to your Mac or PC: no hunting for a cable, setting to PC mode, and all that. Built-in software let you chop off the bad parts and post to YouTube with a couple of clicks. Because it was so quick and simple, you’d wind up catching moments you’d have lost with any other gadget. I’ve got all these great videos of my toddler son in the back seat of the car, because he’d suddenly start singing a hilarious made-up song, and I’d grab the Flip from the center console, hit the button, and I’d have it. I would not have had a prayer of getting those songs if I’d had an app phone. But there’s a second part of the tragedy, too, something that nobody knows. That new Flip that the product manager showed me was astonishing. It was called FlipLive, and it added one powerful new feature to the standard Flip: live broadcasting to the Internet. That is, when you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot, the entire world can see what you’re filming. You can post a link to Twitter or Facebook, or send an e-mail link to friends. Anyone who clicks the link can see what you’re seeing, in real time — thousands of people at once. Think how amazing that would be. The world could tune in, live, to join you in watching concerts. Shuttle launches. The plane in the Hudson. College lectures. Apple keynote speeches. Or your relatives could join you for smaller, more personal events: weddings, birthday parties, graduations, first steps. And the FlipLive was supposed to ship on April 13. The day after Cisco killed the Flip. Nice. I loved the Flip. I loved that its creators, year after year, resisted the urge to gunk it up with complexity and featuritis. I love that it never, ever, let me down. I loved that this startup company created something that changed the world, and ultimately reaped the rewards in popularity and sales. Unfortunately, it also reaped the rewards that come from selling to a megalithic corporation like Cisco. Yes, there was plenty of money to go around, but also the risk that always comes when you sell to a bigger company: that they’ll chop you up and sell off your parts. Or, in Cisco’s case, much worse: chop you up and leave you for dead. I loved the Flip. May it rest in pieces.[/QUOTE] That would have been revolutionary!
[quote]And the FlipLive was supposed to ship on April 13. The day after Cisco killed the Flip.[/quote] You better be fucking kidding me with this, I would have bought one for sure.
I told you it was awesome :smith: I still have mine.
One time I called Staples to see if they had the Flip Mino HD and they were like yeah, so I got there and they were like haha sorry we don't have it we just have the regular one Fuck you staples
Seems a bit daft to kill such a good "vlogging" camera.
[QUOTE=3com111;29283845]Seems a bit daft to kill such a good "vlogging" camera.[/QUOTE] I use it for my art projects :v:
This will make those smaller companies like Kodak to rise in sales. Hopefully they come up with a replacement for the Flip.
sony has some nice bloggie camcorders
Buy as many as you can afford and start flipping them on ebay for a profit in the near future ;D
Oh fuck no I wanted one so bad!
[QUOTE=Chris Parks;29285501]Oh fuck no I wanted one so bad![/QUOTE] You can still buy them in plenty of places.
[QUOTE=meppers;29285246]sony has some nice bloggie camcorders[/QUOTE] the bloggies are AMAZING compared to the flip. the video quality is so, so much better. i'd reccomend this over the other any day... then again now i don't have to! thanks cisco! [editline]18th April 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Apple Pi;29285827]You can still buy them in plenty of places.[/QUOTE] yeah. but they'll be clearance items at this point. most stores just got in a new planogram of cameras and the old-gen cameras that came out last year will be going clearance to make room for them. the flip's most likely going to be going for insanely cheap if anybody even carries them any more because they sell so quickly compared to other vlog camcorders (seeing as they're the only ever advertised anywhere) we'll see
Who ever wrote this article is a real genuine dumbass. He tries to make it seem like its an immoral thing for a company to buy another company for its technology. Then dumping the brand once they got that technology squared away. Then its also immoral for people who don't have cellphones that cant record? We can't just sit away idling waiting for people to update their technology. Cisco's deal to terminate Flip is actually a logical business decision. By the context of this article, this author has a real hard time, grasping this concept of business.
[QUOTE=TH89;29283613]One time I called Staples to see if they had the Flip Mino HD and they were like yeah, so I got there and they were like haha sorry we don't have it we just have the regular one Fuck you staples[/QUOTE] thr
I mean, they should have waited to sell those fancy Live cameras. Get some extra money. Why kill it on the 12th?
[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;29287252]Who ever wrote this article is a real genuine dumbass. He tries to make it seem like its an immoral thing for a company to buy another company for its technology. Then dumping the brand once they got that technology squared away. Then its also immoral for people who don't have cellphones that cant record? We can't just sit away idling waiting for people to update their technology. Cisco's deal to terminate Flip is actually a logical business decision. By the context of this article, this author has a real hard time, grasping this concept of business.[/QUOTE] Also odd is his strange assumption that smartphones and stupid camcorder toys really don't share demographics and the summary of things he doesn't understand as short for "lol dunno."
Loved my flip camera, was easy to use and the quality wasn't bad. Plus, when you're messing around with friends it's the perfect video camera.
I still don't get it. Even if Cisco just wanted the technology, if the Flip was selling successfully, why would they drop it? It just doesn't make any sense.
[QUOTE=Richard Simmons;29287252]Who ever wrote this article is a real genuine dumbass. He tries to make it seem like its an immoral thing for a company to buy another company for its technology. Then dumping the brand once they got that technology squared away. Then its also immoral for people who don't have cellphones that cant record? We can't just sit away idling waiting for people to update their technology. Cisco's deal to terminate Flip is actually a logical business decision. By the context of this article, this author has a real hard time, grasping this concept of business.[/QUOTE] Pretty much this. Cisco has done this before to a few companies. Verrari is a big one. if the Flip was so good then they would not have canned the operation. It obviously did not sell well enough to warrant the operation and development of them. The FlipLive however outs like something cisco will DEFIANTLY want and that fits into their main focus. I am willing to bet we will see a Cisco variant announced in the next 6 months. [editline]19th April 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=cqbcat;29291505]I still don't get it. Even if Cisco just wanted the technology, if the Flip was selling successfully, why would they drop it? It just doesn't make any sense.[/QUOTE] The only Logical answer is that it was not selling successfully. It was not recouping costs of production and employment. A company does not shut down a department that is making a successful amount of money.
Its because the other million cell phone sales are android. They all have 5mp cameras on them, I never bought a flip bc it seemed like a gimmick for little kids and along with my hd recording phone I have am even better nikon camera, nintendo should have made it :v:
I used a Flip once. Shame on you, Cisco. Shame on you.. I will forever by HP switches from this day forth.
Why goddamn it why?
I liked the Flip. Looks like the Flip flopped.
For those of you talking about how the flip isn't as good as an HD camera on a smart phone. SHUT UP! This isn't about you, we didn't get the flip because it was some super phone, we got it because it was cheap and quick to take right to our computer. Not to edit straight away with a crappy ported video editor on a phone :v:
[QUOTE=VengfulSoldier;29298125] Not to edit straight away with a crappy ported video editor on a phone :v:[/QUOTE] That's what USB cords are for.
[QUOTE=nikomo;29296971]I liked the Flip. Looks like the Flip flopped.[/QUOTE] dohohoho I liked it too and I still have mine...
[QUOTE=breakyourfac;29298766]That's what USB cords are for.[/QUOTE] The thing was literally a video USB drive.
[QUOTE=VengfulSoldier;29298868]The thing was literally a video USB drive.[/QUOTE] But why buy ANOTHER camera recorder when practically every house hold already has multiple smart phones and probably a digital camera. Shit even ipods take videos now, the only way the Flip would've been cool is if it was brought into the market like 5 years earlier.
[QUOTE=cqbcat;29291505]I still don't get it. Even if Cisco just wanted the technology, if the Flip was selling successfully, why would they drop it? It just doesn't make any sense.[/QUOTE] It didn't suit the direction they wanted to take the bussiness in.
[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;29285069]This will make those smaller companies like Kodak to rise in sales. Hopefully they come up with a replacement for the Flip.[/QUOTE] How the fuck is Kodak small?!?! You obviously have no clue what you're talking about.
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