Comments on: Is Cisco Finally Serious About the Consumer?

By: Why Juniper’s Polycom Partnership is Destined to Fail – GigaOM

Why Juniper’s Polycom Partnership is Destined to Fail – GigaOM — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:17:45 +0000

[...] wants to boost bandwidth consumption so it can sell more telco gear, but it also wants to build a high-margin ecosystem around the home tied to its gear, in the manner that Apple has. But creating this end-to-end ecosystem tying the [...]

By: Charles Mauro

Charles Mauro — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:22:59 +0000

MauroNewMedia has posted a new article on Pulse>UX titled: “Why Cisco flipped over the Flip Video Cam (and paid $590 million for a small dose of simplicity)”. Ever wonder how much simplicity costs? This post digs into Cisco’s acquisition of the Flip Video Cam (a paragon of simplicity) and why buying simplicity does not work for corporations with complex IT products. If you ever wondered if your company is actually capable of creating simple user experiences, check out our list of key factors that are correlated with creating simple products on a corporate-wide basis.

Read the full article: http://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/

By: Believe It or Not! - All about Pretend Learning | Human Resources Classes & Degree Solution

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:13:30 +0000

[...] Is Cisco Finally Serious About the Consumer? (gigaom.com) [...]

By: Painting Your Mediocre Gear Pink Doesn’t Mean Women Will Buy It

Painting Your Mediocre Gear Pink Doesn’t Mean Women Will Buy It — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:02:55 +0000

[...] work, without constant updates, even when you bring a new device into the ecosystem. That’s hard for consumer electronics companies to do, so I can see why they instead hope women, who tend to buy a lot of the home electronics [...]

By: Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:33:06 +0000

Cisco’s achilles heel has been and will be mobile. Still, they have seriously lacked a good consumer exec to drive that Apple like simplicity and industrial design, and the Pure team gives them that.

I think that where Cisco lacks mobile, Apple lacks a good carrier/pay TV story, and they also would have a hard time aligning with any consumer electronics vendors in the living room space (and are going to have trouble integrating popular 3rd party big-content services for those media companies disenchanted with iTunes). They have forced themselves a go-it-alone route in the living room. Only they can pull that off like no other company can, but Cisco can much easier align and partner in both CE, online media and payTV carrier space.

All that said, a Palm or even – gasp – RIM acquisition (maybe too expensive) would be a industry changing acquisition.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:58:59 +0000

Let’s get one thing out of the way here. The Cisco acquisition of Pure Digital may turn out to have been a mistake. As pointed out, one new release from Apple via the video enabled 3GS and this becomes a write down for Cisco. Second, the argument that they brought in talent is not in question. What is in question is the $590M is cost Cisco shareholders.

If Cisco wants to become a player in the consumer market they outta buy a company such as Palm. Though Palm is trading at a high price (IMO), it still would only represent approx 2% of Cisco today (market cap: Palm $2B vs. Cisco $115B).

A mobile device strategy for Cisco would give them immediate access to consumer, SMB, Enterprise

Applications currently under Cisco umbrella or could be part of an acquisition roadmap:
1) Create synergies down the road with Webex developer platform and Mobile development platform —- APPS FOR CONSUMERS & BUSINESS
2) Extend existing Unified Communications offering which is fantastic —– COMMUNICATIONS FOR CONSUMERS & BUSINESS
3) Acquire company that has traction in the internet embedded new TV’s to carry rich web content and merge with Linksys group—— CONSUMER & BUSINESS CUSTOMERS

Bottom line Cisco is a great company and is only a few moves away from becoming a force to be reckoned with in the consumer segment without losing focus on their enterprise bread and butter.

Ned, congrats and next time your in Danville give me a ring:)

By: Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:52:24 +0000

@Habib – To me, Cisco acquired both Pure Digital and a serious consumer exec team to drive their business. If Kaplan alone can spur an entirely new line or two of consumer business that generates $billions over a multiyear period, that alone could be a justification for the $590 million pricetag.

By: Does Cisco’s Exec Move Mean It Will Be Serious Challenger to Apple? – Gigaom.com « Auth7’s Weblog

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:06:13 +0000

[...] Exec Move Mean It Will Be Serious Challenger to Apple? – Gigaom.com By indramgl Does Cisco’s Exec Move Mean It Will Be Serious Challenger to Apple? – Gigaom.comWhile most of the tech world was abuzz today with the announcement of Google’s Chrome OS , another [...]

By: Habib Ullah Khan

Habib Ullah Khan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:43:44 +0000

Great post. If only because it figured out that this move is as much about Kaplan as it is about Ned Hooper. From a purely corporate cultural perspective it is fascinating to see when an outsider enters a company with its dominant culture and whether he thrives or simply survives. Building great companies is a culture game as much as it is a technology game. And Kaplan’s example will show us how much Cisco is ready to be great.

Since I work at Cisco this is of a little bit of interest to me!