I think the Flip was killed because Enterprise customers turned away from Cisco. People like me openly laughed and denigrated Cisco for “playing with toys” instead producing better products. And that cost more money, way more money, in lost sales at 65% gross profit margin than any consumer/retail product will make.
When you drop a billion bucks in revenue (as Cisco has) then you lose $400 million odd in profit because customers aren’t taking you seriously.
The Cisco Flip wasn’t killed by the iPhone 4 or smartphones in general. Or any other cameras. At least, smartphones weren’t the only problem – I’d guess that Cisco had more designs under way, but they didn’t execute well to bring them to market – at least, no worse than Canon or Kodak.
But losing that revenue is core business. That hurts.
That’s why they Cisco threw it away and didn’t bother to sell it. A $540 million mistake that needed to be over so as to stop the bleeding in the core business.
This also doesn’t bode well for the Cisco Cius tablet. It’s also a consumer product dressed up as an enterprise device. So far, I’ve not heard a single person who has touched and seen one say anything positive about the product. And it’s been around the place for a long time.
Stuart Miniman
Greg,
I agree that while enterprise customers are probably OK with Scientific Atlanta and Linksys, Flip tended to annoy them (I remember reading blog posts from you and others complaining about the lack of focus at Cisco Live in the past). I also am skeptical about Cius – announced last July and maybe starts showing up soon (see http://m.cio.com/article/679629/As_PlayBook_Launc…. Cisco needs growth and there are only so many switch and router ports to sell, so adjacencies are needed and not every new idea will turn into $1B. Shame about Flip – it's well known and liked by everyone that has one, that's a hard thing to do these days.
Cheers,
Stu
Etherealmind
Simple. Cisco will buy EMC or NetApp by the end of the year or sooner to complete the Data Centre portfolio. If they buy EMC then VMware won't be included.
Instant addition to the bottom line, consistent enterprise execution. Cisco goes head to head to with HP, IBM & Dell in the Enterprise data center instead of being a bit player.
Cisco should throw out Linksys and SciAt today, and get started on the buying storage immediately and delivering on a decent enterprise management platform.