Comments on: Cisco’s Big Consumer Telepresence Fail

By: bjuice77

bjuice77 — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 10:18:46 +0000

Cisco have a lot to answer for. I was recently made redundant #fail

By: Vamshi Sriperumbudur

Vamshi Sriperumbudur — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:47:11 +0000

That said, I think SMBs are a great market for Cisco Umi with its current pricing.

By: Vamshi Sriperumbudur

Vamshi Sriperumbudur — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:44:37 +0000

Blame it on Pricing.. $599 for the box and $29/mo

a) Device Fee. $99 is the magic number for a utility box. Some observations from the STB market..Apple TV went from $250 (?) to $99, Roku $59-$99 – that’s what seem works for the consumer devices. Logitech Revue $199.. again a lot.

b) Subscription Fee. Unless it’s niche or rare content, the magic number here seems to be max $9.99/mo. Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.

I like Skype’s freemium model. If the device is required they throw it for free for 1 or 2 yr contract, like DISH and DirecTV do on their DVR STBs.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:36:52 +0000

It was my understanding Cisco’s CIUS play was targeting ‘corporate business’ not consumer channels. From what I gathered, Cisco knew targeting the CIUS as a competitive product against Apple/Ipad, and to a lesser degree other Android/tablets…was not the best approach.

Rather, it looks like Cisco is using their CIUS as an all-inclusive Addroid business tablet, that is a front-end to an entire back-end ‘collaborative’ corporate/enterprise open solution

From what I can tell, Cisco’s recent announcement of their XMPP client ‘Cisco Jabber’ is the culmination of Cisco illustrating that its not solely the end-user hand-held device (apple/rim/android/symbian/windows) that is the key to business adoption. Rather its the device and the ‘network collaborative tools’ that are the key to enterprise adoption of a smartphone or tablet for business/corporate use. It is amazing that the Cisco Jabber client is compatilble with every phone and tablet OS out there

I saw an example of the Cisco Jabber used on apple/rim/android/symbain/windows here at the ‘enterprise connect’ conference last week, here: https://www.myciscocommunity.com/videos/7304

By: Eddie

Eddie — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 06:34:40 +0000

On a related note, whatever happened to Cisco’s Cius tablet? Remember last year when Cisco had to act pompous and they were jealous of the attention given the iPad so they came out with a press release about the Cius (vapor vapor vapor)! The world will not accept Cisco’s bogusness when it comes to Cius etc.

By: Brad Reese

Brad Reese — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 02:55:33 +0000

Hi Ryan,

During Q2′FY11 Cisco’s much ballyhooed collaboration sales (which include the sales of Cisco’s telepresence, Tandberg and unified communications products) sequentially declined by -$39 million.

Interestingly, during Cisco’s Q2′FY11 earnings call, Cisco EVP and Chief Financial Officer – Frank Calderoni, conveniently omitted that Cisco reduced its outstanding share count by a mere 44 million shares (i.e. 5,577 billion – 5,533 billion = 44 million) during Q2′FY11.

That means a whopping 45 million shares (i.e. 50.56% and/or $910 million) of Cisco’s total Q2′FY11 stock buybacks went to support Cisco’s dilutive management compensation practices!

Revealingly in my opinion, stock buybacks were first authorized by Cisco’s board in September 2001. So over the past 10-years the number of Cisco shares outstanding has decreased by 1.768 billion shares, however, Cisco has actually repurchased a total of 3.329 billion shares at a a weighted average price per share of $20.81

That means a staggering 1.561 billion of Cisco’s shares that were repurchased (i.e. $32.484 billion of Cisco shareholder cash), went to support Cisco’s dilutive management compensation practices over the past 10-years.

Sincerely,

Brad Reese

By: John

John — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 02:16:29 +0000

I remember being very amused by the umi strategy at its launch. When I was growing up, my family had a TV that could act like a giant speakerphone. Taking phone calls in the living room while watching Miami Vice was great fun…for a while. But eventually you realized you really wanted to watch TV. (Or, these days, play games, surf the web, etc.) Or maybe somebody else wanted to watch TV and you were hogging it for a call. Regardless, after the novelty wore off, we stopped using the “phone” function. That took about 2 months.

In addition to the above “novelty product” problem, Cisco added a hefty price tag and an ongoing service charge! Perhaps it was never meant for consumer use in the first place? One reviewer suggested it would serve as a cheap back-door way to introduce telepresence to smaller businesses.

By: Joe Pemberton

Joe Pemberton — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 01:13:50 +0000

Recently become a fan of Clayton Christensen (who coined the term disruptive innovation). His axiom is that companies almost always invent better, higher priced products and therefore risk being undercut by disruptors.

If Cisco plays this correctly their disruption of themselves (aka cannibalism) is their path toward innovation.