Flip’s Demise: 3 Reasons Cisco Pulled the Plug

Flip, the ovate-to-use camcorder from Cisco, is acquiring spiked. The Thumb cameras, first introduced almost five years ago, captured almost 15 percent of the camcorder market and the Black Maria of many an customers who liked the devices for their simplicity.

The closing of the Flip operation is reportedly going to mean the loss of about 550 jobs and toll Cisco around $300 trillion, not to mention the millions of people who bought and cherish these cameras.

So, what caused the demise of much a common production?

Smartphones Killed the Flip out

Speaking to NPR's Morning Variation, PC Magazine's Lance Ulanoff says video recording and photo cameras becoming standard equipment on smartphones undid the Flip. Why would someone stock a devoted camcorder when they already have united on their call? Modern smartphones can now too shoot HD video and high-firmness photos (albeit not as high quality as a sacred product), and consumer appetite for smartphones meant that Turn over sales were declining. As such, Charles the Bald Arthur writes for The Shielder that the standalone motion-picture camera business is effectively dead.

Profit Margins Not Big Decent

After acquiring several consumer businesses over the past years (including Sodding Digital Technologies, the makers of the Flip), Lake herring's consumer strategy was plagued with duds, Marguerite Reardon explained on Cnet's Signal Strength web log. Actually, market research stable NPD ground that Flip lost market share subsequently it was bought by Lake herring, despite an increase in overall sales in the category. With Lake herring used to high profit margins from go-ahead sales, low margins (of approximately 30 percent) in the consumer business were in all probability not good enough for the company.

Cisco Wants to Get Serious

All Things D's Kara Swisher writes that by axing the Flip, Cisco is staging a "lame attempt" to fulfill its investors, who wanted the company to focussing on its core business operating theatre networking products, where Cisco saw inflated competition from like HP and several Chinese manufacturers.

Are you going to miss the Flip, or can your smartphone do the job? Sound off in the comments.

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