Switched On: Flip-flops

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology.

This week’s announcement that Cisco is shuttering its Flip Video business was however the latest twist within the history of the market share-leading device. The Flip got its start after its creator, Pure Digital, modified its original disposable camcorder to be reusable after hackers showed it may be done. And its success continued to defy convention that the product would resonate against a slew of digital cameras and increasingly competent smartphones which could shoot competitive — or even high definition — video.

The Flip also soared above the market share of businesses with far stronger brands resembling Sony and Kodak, although the latter made gains on a string of hits, including the 1080p-shooting Zi8 and waterproof PlaySport . It even fought back an initial foray from Apple’s iPod nano and was still holding its own after the debut of the most recent iPod touch, which took the HD video capture feature from the iPhone and made it available with no contract. Yes, the Flip hung tough. That’s why its cancellation says volumes about Cisco, the corporate that acquired it for some $590 million in stock.

Cisco had to show growth with a shopper product line which can not be easily augmented with acquisitions and that derived little reference to the mum brand — even under Linksys, the corporate’s networking line. Cisco certainly tried. However the Flip group made a number of false moves that stuck out like a pop-out USB connector, and with little of that spring-loaded joy.

While Flip pioneered and benefited from its differentiated specialise in sharing video, its tackle two sharing scenarios fell flat. The 1st was its TV bridge, the $100 FlipShareTV , which tried to cater to these with out a home network by including a fat USB transmitter. Unfortunately, that dongle had to be connected to a computer or Mac, so one can send video to a box that worked only with FlipShare software, making things unnecessarily difficult.

Another was on-the-go one-on-one sharing of an identical screen like a palm-sized miniature theater, which was attempted by the Flip Slide HD . However the $230 Slide HD was thick, expensive, and its touch implementation compared poorly with those of later, cheaper competitors reminiscent of the Sony 0 Bloggie Touch 0 and Kodak 1 PlayTouch 1 . Then there has been FlipPort, a classic lock-in attempt that aspired to rival Apple’s dock connector but attracted even fewer add-on products than the old Springboard connector for Handspring’s Visor PDA. The lesson: in the event you’re going to fasten in consumers, it’s best to construct a jail that individuals should probably want to move into anyway.

While none of those miscues sunk Flip, all of them demonstrated how the product was stuck betwen a slab and two hard places — the slab being subsidized smartphones that increasingly could do more with video; the primary hard place being the high-end market of camcorders with manual white balance adjustment controls offending the Flip minimalism ideal; and the second one hard place being the mixing into Cisco’s networked world. Had the Flip lived another month, we would have at the least seen integrated WiFi, a key step toward progress on that front.

The Flip had a powerful run for a longshot device and would all but certainly have years sooner than it within the hands of a more aligned owner. Cisco spent heavily promoting the camcorder in the course of the 2009 and 2010 holiday seasons, asking consumers the question, “Do you flip”? Cisco surely did.

Next week’s Switched On will have a look at the legacy of the Flip, which not just turned the camcorder category upside-down but has had implications for other tech companies to boot, from startups to Fortune 500 firms.

Ross Rubin ( 2 @rossrubin 2 ) is executive director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm 3 The NPD Group 3 . Views expressed in Switched On are his own.

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This post is tagged: consumer technology, Digital Cameras, disposable camcorder, High Definition, initial foray, video business