Comments on: BYOD didn’t kill Cisco’s tablet; it was a doomed idea

By: fanfoot

fanfoot — Wed, 30 May 2012 05:52:31 +0000

Oh, btw, I was going to comment on how this wasn’t the only stupid product Cisco continued to work on even as they supposedly cut back and focused, but I just realized they killed the Umi back in January. Another product that never should have made it past the concept stage…

By: fanfoot

fanfoot — Wed, 30 May 2012 05:50:14 +0000

Agree completely. It was a bad product even when it was announced. And the idea that it was doomed strictly by the BYOD trend is ridiculous. Even without that it would have died an ignominious death.

Odd of course that Cisco was executing on BYOD with its own Employees (killing off company paid phones, supporting iPhones on the corporate network etc) long before acknowledging this ‘trend’ as if they just noticed it now.

Seriously, Cisco doesn’t even give new employees phones anymore. They just hand them headsets and tell them to use softphones on their laptops. Did they think they were the only ones going through this?

By: RenoPDX

RenoPDX — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:52:25 +0000

And video. Don’t forget video — Cisco is placing a lot of bets on video-based collaboration.

By: Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan Cohen — Mon, 28 May 2012 11:53:59 +0000

Let’s hope they don’t have a patent that they’ll sit on for that nifty phone dock shown in the photo…I’d like to see something like that for Android/iOS tablets.

By: Zunair Seemab Zain

Zunair Seemab Zain — Sat, 26 May 2012 06:36:48 +0000

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By: Mcbeese

Mcbeese — Fri, 25 May 2012 23:16:46 +0000

Cisco is a funny company. They think they make great products and that is often an issue. Their edge routers have always been decent, but everything else they offer is what I would judge to be ‘adequate’. Never the best option on the market and never cutting-edge. Cisco’s strength is its sales force. They’re like rabid dogs foaming at the mouth. Give them something even ‘adequate’ and they will often make it a category leader.

The trouble with the Cius is that it wasn’t even ‘adequate’ and it was an internal product effort. Doomed to underachieve.

In my arrogant opinion, Cisco would have been wiser to acquire an up-and-coming MDM company overflowing with Android tablet, point them at the tablet market, and arm the sales force with something sellable, not something that is 2 years behind the market and twice as expensive as competitive options.

By: Benjamin Ortega

Benjamin Ortega — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:46:10 +0000

BYOD = Bring your own device. You would think someone at Cisco would have said, “aren’t we contradicting BYOD by trying to introduce a device for enterprise employees”. I would think that would have been asked at some point before today??

By: Divergent Trend

Divergent Trend — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:34:22 +0000

They’re pushing Jabber and BYOD software solutions for the time being. They’re also demoing “backpack” style thin client terminals for existing desk phones.

All those Callmanager installations aren’t going to disappear overnight, they have time.

Though, they really do need something more compelling than Jabber for mobile.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:21:44 +0000

The funny thing is Cisco’s corporate hubris. They thought it would be a slam dunk to compete with the iPad. After all, the iPad is “easy” to copy right? Just slap Android onto it and “presto” you have the tablet clone. Ha ha, see you later Cisco.

By: Matt Eagar

Matt Eagar — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:02:46 +0000

Agree that the tablet itself was flawed. But I think their reason for creating it was valid and does not go away just because they have moved on to other things: the days of the desk phone appear numbered, at least in its current form. What seemed interesting about the Cius was that it was a radical new take on the office phone, a way to keep it relevant when other mobile telephony devices were really starting to take off. To me the question now is what will happen to their phone business. They aren’t going to make up the revenue by selling a handful of enterprise software services — I just don’t see the Jabber IM system as something that is going to generate billions a year for them.