Cisco Pulls The Plug On $590 Million Flip Experiment
Cisco is taking a lot of heat this week for its decision to shutter its Flip video camera business, which the networking giant obtained through its 2009 acquisition of Pure Digital. The criticism is understandable: $590 million is a lot of scratch, and many Cisco shareholders weren't happy about the obvious frivolity of the expenditure.
Cisco CEO John Chambers spends a lot of time talking about Cisco's ability to anticipate market transitions before they happen, which makes the Pure Digital deal even more tough to understand. Cisco had reportedly been planning to build Wi-Fi into the Flip line, but apparently didn't move fast enough. Nor did it realize that videocamera would become a feature of smartphones and lose its viability as a standalone consumer product.
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