Nano vs. the Flip: Who wins?
Talking to Flip owners, you sense a bit of defensiveness about the new Nano. It reminds me of a political discussion where you’re talking to someone who just saw their candidate lose, despite being smarter, with better positions and shinier teeth. In a sense I can’t blame them, since — as shown by Liz and Chris over at NewTeeVee — the Flip actually is a better video camera than the Nano.
But as we know, being better doesn’t matter. The new Nano will sell by the truckload, and in the process push pocket video to the masses. As for the Flip, it may not sell as many video cameras as Apple will with its Nano in the coming year, but its certainly not going to get crushed as many predict. What will happen instead — as I write in my analysis over at GigaOM Pro (subscription required) — is Cisco will actually sell more of these devices because of the Nano, as awareness of pocket video goes up.
What are your thoughts? Will the Nano crush the Flip, or grow the market as I predict?
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I think it’ll grow the market. It’s certainly increasing my awareness of pocket video, although I think knowing that Apple can be competitive with the Flip, I’d just upgrade my 3g iPhone to the 3gS if I wanted pocket video at this point.
Apple’s move to include a camera in the Nano appears to me to be a means of making the option of buying a new digital music player more viable. Does anyone really need a new music player at this point? If you have bought an iPod or a high quality MP3 player in the last year or two and taken good care of it, is there really a strong incentive to buy a new one? I don’t think there is (but I still own a 3rd Gen iPod as a back-up to my 1st gen Touch, so take that as you will).
Now, however, there is a new feature to your digital music player that wasn’t there before. Now it can record video, something your old device was incapable of. That is (somewhat) buy worthy (or atleast is presented as being that).
My Flip split the LCD screen on a trip from my house to the train station. Secured in my bag where my camera and ipod have traveled a 100 times. They claimed it was not their bad design that caused its demise but misuse.
I’m betting the Nano doesn’t have such frailties.
I have the original flip ultra. My next purchase was going to be the Flip Ultra HD. Actually, that hasn’t changed.
I have an iPhone 3GS and the video is “ok” the iPod nano video is “ok” but there are HD handheld cameras out there from Kodak, Flip & Canon that cost the same as the nano and shoot HD VIDEO.
There’s nothing political about this, it’s a matter of having a dedicated evice or some “all-in-one” we all know the all in one devices do everything “ok”