Semi Conscious
What's next?
Dylan McGrath
4/18/2011 4:01 AM EDT
What accountants have to say
Sources said Cisco had signaled its desire to exit the consumer market and was advised to seek a buyer for the Flip business. It is not known if Cisco engaged in discussions with any other company about a possible sale. A spokesperson for Cisco did not immediately respond to a request for an interview.
"Sometimes it comes down to what the accountants have to say," Gartenberg said. According to Gartenberg, it seems likely that Cisco calculated that it would be easier and ultimately less costly to simply shutter the unit and write it off, rather than going to the time and trouble of finding a buyer and selling Flip at a considerable loss. "Someone at Cisco ran the numbers and decided that this was the way to go," Gartenberg said.
New York Times columnist David Pogue last week theorized that the most plausible reason Cisco choose to kill the Flip business rather than sell it is because Cisco wants to hold onto the Flip technology, presumably to apply to other areas. But it's not clear what about the Flip technology would be applicable to Cisco's other businesses, though the company said in its statement last week that video remains one of its five key company priorities. (Pogue also reported that Cisco was supposed to release a new Flip model last week, FlipLive, capable of live video broadcasting to the Internet).
Jordan Selburn, a consumer electronics analyst at market research firm IHS iSuppli, said that despite Flip's position in the marketplace, the Flip unit may have simply been unprofitable. "Cisco may have simply decided that they don't have consumer DNA," Selburn said.
"Part of the problem with Flip was once you bought one, you never had a reason to buy another one," Gartenberg said, adding that Cisco "lacked an understanding of the marketplace."
"This is a sad thing for the whole industry," said Rick Doherty, co-founder and director at the Envisioneering Group. Doherty said the Flip design team made a serious impact on the consumer electronics world and predicted that its members would resurface and "spread their wings."
"Camcorders are still a good business for many people," Doherty said. "There will be more innovation there, and great things will probably be coming. It's just a shame that Cisco took this route of not heeding industry trends and not, it seems, even respecting the company that they acquired."
So it would seem that we can't make a case against convergence alone in the killing of the Flip. But clearly its fingerprints were among those found at the scene of the crime. According to Selburn, the "dedicated single-tasker"—a gadget with only one application—is under fire in all areas of consumer electronics, thanks in large part to the threat posed by multiple-application devices like the smartphone and media tablet. "That doesn't mean that they are all going away or doing badly," Sulburn said.
Let's take a look at some of the other heretofore popular—even beloved—consumer electronics devices that face threat from this menace at large.
Next: MP3 player/iPod
Sources said Cisco had signaled its desire to exit the consumer market and was advised to seek a buyer for the Flip business. It is not known if Cisco engaged in discussions with any other company about a possible sale. A spokesperson for Cisco did not immediately respond to a request for an interview.
"Sometimes it comes down to what the accountants have to say," Gartenberg said. According to Gartenberg, it seems likely that Cisco calculated that it would be easier and ultimately less costly to simply shutter the unit and write it off, rather than going to the time and trouble of finding a buyer and selling Flip at a considerable loss. "Someone at Cisco ran the numbers and decided that this was the way to go," Gartenberg said.
New York Times columnist David Pogue last week theorized that the most plausible reason Cisco choose to kill the Flip business rather than sell it is because Cisco wants to hold onto the Flip technology, presumably to apply to other areas. But it's not clear what about the Flip technology would be applicable to Cisco's other businesses, though the company said in its statement last week that video remains one of its five key company priorities. (Pogue also reported that Cisco was supposed to release a new Flip model last week, FlipLive, capable of live video broadcasting to the Internet).
Jordan Selburn, a consumer electronics analyst at market research firm IHS iSuppli, said that despite Flip's position in the marketplace, the Flip unit may have simply been unprofitable. "Cisco may have simply decided that they don't have consumer DNA," Selburn said.
"Part of the problem with Flip was once you bought one, you never had a reason to buy another one," Gartenberg said, adding that Cisco "lacked an understanding of the marketplace."
"This is a sad thing for the whole industry," said Rick Doherty, co-founder and director at the Envisioneering Group. Doherty said the Flip design team made a serious impact on the consumer electronics world and predicted that its members would resurface and "spread their wings."
"Camcorders are still a good business for many people," Doherty said. "There will be more innovation there, and great things will probably be coming. It's just a shame that Cisco took this route of not heeding industry trends and not, it seems, even respecting the company that they acquired."
So it would seem that we can't make a case against convergence alone in the killing of the Flip. But clearly its fingerprints were among those found at the scene of the crime. According to Selburn, the "dedicated single-tasker"—a gadget with only one application—is under fire in all areas of consumer electronics, thanks in large part to the threat posed by multiple-application devices like the smartphone and media tablet. "That doesn't mean that they are all going away or doing badly," Sulburn said.
Let's take a look at some of the other heretofore popular—even beloved—consumer electronics devices that face threat from this menace at large.
Next: MP3 player/iPod
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rick.merritt
4/18/2011 12:52 PM EDT
I still like my Flip for quick video takes that are easy to get to the Web. And I think there is still room for a dedicated video recorder, especially if it does live to Web w/o a PC!
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chanj
4/18/2011 1:04 PM EDT
Flip video can turn into an app that goes into a smartphone. The convergence that is brought with smartphone has killed some products and will continue to do so.
For PND, personally, I still prefer to have a separate PND device from my smartphone for an obvious reason. I don't really enjoy my navigation being interrupted by an incoming call. In addition, with navigation on during my tour, the battery in the smartphone just can't last. What's your preference?
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rm88888
4/18/2011 3:59 PM EDT
I've always been a big fan of GPS nav. However, as with the other convergence devices, I simply don't want to have to carry more stuff. When I'm driving, I usually have my phone CLA powered, using it as a media source (BT) for music, and handsfree - so power isn't so much an issue and it's already set up anyway. And if I know I'm going to have some heavy use without access to power, I have an expanded capacity battery. For other nav purposes, such as walking or basic "where is that restaurant" nav, a smartphone works fine (and how often do you just carry around a PND?). So a smartphone handles 90% of my nav needs for "free" and without additional equipment. What other uses do I have for a PND? Well, biking, but then I have a specifically engineered cyclometer/GPS for that. So really, I have no need nor desire for a separate PND. And consider this - one outing on vacation, 3 of us in a rental car, one had a PND, one had an iPhone, and I had my EVO. Who was doing the nav? Me.
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Frank Eory
4/18/2011 1:54 PM EDT
I'm glad the article pointed out one of the often overlooked barriers to smartphones obsoleting the functionality of all these single-function products: the fact that smartphones have a significant perpetual monthly cost.
Even if I thought a smartphone was an acceptable substitute for my digital still camera or my MP3 player -- and I do not -- I am one of those consumers who likes to buy a product rather than rent it, and use it until a better one comes along, or until it breaks. Then I buy, not rent, a newer model.
Nobody really ever owns their smartphone. You get one from your wireless carrier at a heavily subsidized low price, and you commit to paying a hefty monthly bill for 2 years, part of which is $30/month for internet access. If you change your mind or wish to change carriers, you will end up paying full retail for that smartphone...which may not even work on another carrier's network.
Consider just the monthly data cost of $30, just a fraction of your total wireless bill. At $30/month, how many months would it take to save enough to buy a nice HD video camera? A digital still camera that also does HD video? An MP3 player with 120GB of storage? A portable GPS device?
Perhaps it is inevitable that we will all eventually be pushed into getting smartphones and paying higher monthly bills to one wireless carrier or another. But that doesn't mean that all of us will cherish the idea of become renters rather than owners...
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Larry M
4/18/2011 3:01 PM EDT
To Frank Eory: You wrote "Nobody really ever owns their smartphone."
You're using the wrong carrier. In the US, the carriers using GSM technology will sell you by-the-month service with no phone and no contract. I've done this for a dozen years. If I feel like having a new phone I just get an "unlocked" phone and transfer my "SIM" (smart card) to it.
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Frank Eory
4/18/2011 6:20 PM EDT
Valid point. I see that one can buy a 16GB iPhone4 without a contract for just upwards of $600.
T-Mobile offers unlimited talk & text plus 2GB of data for $70/month with no contract. Or if you don't plan to use much data, you can get unlimited talk, text and 100MB for $50/month, also with no contract, and get a web "day pass" for $1.49 for 24 hours when you need more data.
I acknowledge that the iPhone4 is still useful in those months when you choose not to pay for wireless service. It can still take pictures and videos and still play music.
But it would probably feel rather strange, I think, to take it out and use it as a camera & MP3 player during those months when you choose not to pay for service and it is unable to function as a phone or web browsing appliance.
With my digital still camera or my MP3 player, it never feels strange to not make a monthly payment to enable full usage of the device :)
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whizkidtn
4/18/2011 3:06 PM EDT
Sorry, but I've yet to find a decent SmartPhone that takes as good of a video as the FlipHD. When you factor in the ease of use and editing functions, the FlipHD (and likely others in this segment like Kodak's unit) still beat the SmartPhone. From a consumer prospective at least, Ciso made a mistake with this one.
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dirk.bruere
4/18/2011 3:24 PM EDT
What next?
If Tablet/phone makers had the wit to add an IR output it would be the end of all remote control handsets, esp the high end ones.
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mtanner
4/18/2011 3:38 PM EDT
Just used my Flip over the weekend with a tripod. Can't imagine trying to hold a smartphone over more than a minute or two w/o the image starting to bounce all over the place when my arms get tired. Little things like that will ultimately keep many of these single use devices around, though probably not nearly as large a market, as many folks who don't care for quality photo/video (etc) will use their smartphones instead.
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Bob Virkus
4/18/2011 5:54 PM EDT
Seems like someone always meets the needs. You can now get a special holder for an iPhone that allows it to be connected to a tripod. Go figure.
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rm88888
4/18/2011 4:19 PM EDT
Here are the "devices" I have at my disposal on my smart phone: phone, internet access, PDA, camera, GPS nav, video cam, music/video player, scientific calculator. That's seven devices I would have to carry around (not counting "internet access" and the other apps and utilities I have). I am going to have the first two items (phone, internet) regardless. So for me the argument "but the monthly fees" in favor of dedicated devices doesn't really hold water as I will be paying those fees _anyway_, that doesn't really count as a "cost" of that convergence. I see it as I'm going to have that cost anyway so why wouldn't I want those devices integrated into one device I can put in my pocket rather than needing a "man-purse" to carry all those dedicated devices?
And as for the Flip, when you get right down to it, isn't that just an app that could run on a smartphone? It's not like the Flip has any hardware that isn't found on most smartphones.
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martin_#5
4/18/2011 4:27 PM EDT
Like gamers, those who use a camera will not sacrifice function of the lens and aperture combination of the "real thing" for the rubbish you currently get on a Smart Phone and I doubt Smart Phone users will sacrifice the size for a better zoom lens. Even low cost compact ditigal cameras offer such better quality still and video imagery than the best of todays Smart Phones (and at a fraction of the cost).
Why hasn't the Smart Phone killed the calculator? I think there are still some applications that people will want a seperate device for. I still prefer to use the old Casio even when at my PC.
I'm not personaly into video, but can see that it's proponents would still want something like a Flip rather than the shoddy compromise current Smart Phones offer and ease of use; on my last Smart Phone I could never locate the video function in a timely manner so ended up never using it and just gave up and used my still camera in video mode.
I also expect the Tablet will be a passing fad, I've never been attracted to them and all those I know who have them use it for is browsing and it's a very expensive way to surf on a very small screen. Something else I can do on my Smart Phone.
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dylan.mcgrath
4/18/2011 5:20 PM EDT
@martin_#5- great point about the calculator. I think we can all basically agree that convergence isn't going to "kill" any of these products. But it, combined with other factors, are going to make the markets for these products smaller, less lucrative and less sexy over time. But that probably would have happened anyway, one way or the other, right?
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Bob Virkus
4/18/2011 6:00 PM EDT
David Pouge in the NYT probably said it best why the Flip was superior to any smart phone: "The Flip was a great product. Much simpler than a camcorder — the thing pretty much had only one button, Record/Stop — and also much simpler than an app phone....Because it was so quick and simple, you’d wind up catching moments you’d have lost with any other gadget."
As long as you had the Flip in your pocket you could be shooting with seconds.
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MeirG
4/18/2011 6:10 PM EDT
Equating (stills camera) mega-pixels with "quality" is pure bunk! Stills are either viewed on screen or are printed on a 4" x 6" photographic paper. The first has about 1.1 mega-pixel at best. The second, at 200 pixels/inch, again, at best, accounts for 0.96 mega-pixels.
So pray tell me someone, what do you do with 16 Mega-pixels other than wasting storage volume???
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JmS
4/21/2011 10:58 AM EDT
There is a valid point hiding in your post, but obscured by overstating it. Sometimes you want to print an 8"x10" and frame it. Sometimes you just want to zoom in on an image and see more detail. 1MP won't be good for either of those. But 6MP probably would be. 12MP certainly would be. And: what you do with extra pixels on a 4x6 print is average them together to reduce visible noise. It's much easier to reduce noise on a 12MP image without losing significant detail than on a much lower resolution image, where the noise features are about the same size as the details of the image.
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MeirG
4/21/2011 11:43 AM EDT
OK, but one must keep in mind that more pixels come at a price: smaller pixels. This in turn means less charge to be accumulated, therefore lower signal to thermal noise ratio and very much smaller dynamic range. In other words, poorer images. Also, larger prints are viewed from a longer distance, so resolution matters less. The only place where higher resolution is really necessary and where the above price is (somewhat) tolerable is in reconnaissance. There one looks at every pixel. Hardly the situation in a phone camera.
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Edward Rivas
4/18/2011 6:44 PM EDT
Reading all the stories about the end of Flip you'd think that this was the only device of it's type and consumers had no other options but nothing could be farther from the truth! I owned a creative Mino HD and loved it until I lost it (glad it wasn't my $500 Droid). Pocket camcorders have their place and will continue to sell but as the quality of smartphone (Uber-Super-smartphones?) comes up, they'll have to compete on more than just decent quality for the price. They'll need to have better optics, better quality, 3-D, etc... at the same or a lower price.
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rick.merritt
4/18/2011 8:26 PM EDT
There's a short but good interview with the founder of Flip creator Pure Digital on NPR today at http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2
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pcardout
4/19/2011 2:36 AM EDT
Well I'm sure the writer had a good time itemizing what the smart-phone would kill, but this is kind of a silly article.
Looking at your pics, it seems many of you are as old as I am and so remember all the hype about convergence and the "multimedia PC" from the 1980s. It took till between 2000 and 2005 for the PC to be graceful at doing all the things it did in a clunky manner in the 80s. This iPad mania is just a repeat of the multimedia PC discussion.
Regarding cameras ... you need a big lens to collect a lot of light in many applications until you can deal with the noise problem on CCDs. Once you are carrying a nice hunk of glass and maybe a telephoto lens around, it is no longer a compact device like a smart phone. I suppose you could build a lens mount into a smartphone ... but how about you just stick with a camera? Regarding the MP3 player, as some mentioned, it's not a good idea to carry a $600 smartphone to the gym or on a hike when you can carry a smaller and perhaps more rugged $40 MP3 player.
I guess I buy that the smart-phone will put price pressure on the single purpose devices, but a device that does one thing well often wins against a multifunction device with compromises or complexity.
If we accept that there might soon come a single chip (like Apple's A5 ASIC) which embodies processing, telephony, GPS, photography, networking, video and music player capability (for example), it is possible that the volume on that ASIC could be so high that a music player vendor, a camera vendor, and a portable GPS maker could all buy the same chip and throw away most of its functionality (as I understand Apple did with it's iPod touch, really an iPhone), and only attach the bits that are needed for their single application.
So at the ASIC or firmware level I believe in convergence, but the idea that we need to carry the electronic equivalent of a 20-blade swiss-army knife for simpler modern pleasures is distasteful ... and unrealistic.
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junko.yoshida
4/19/2011 1:05 PM EDT
One item missing from this list. A wrist watch. Most teenagers don't use that any more; instead, they depend on their cell phone to tell the time.
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Frank Eory
4/19/2011 1:16 PM EDT
Not only teenagers :)
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pcardout
4/19/2011 2:00 PM EDT
Me too ... when my watch is between batteries ... but then you have to remember to put the cel on vibrate in meetings.
Also, the "access time" of a cel phone is longer, you have to take it out of your pocket rather than just looking at your wrist. So again, the simple, single-function device is superior to the expensive multifunction device for the particular job it does!
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Carlos1966
4/22/2011 11:07 AM EDT
Apparently none of the items you mentioned have been enough to convince teens to wear watches. They've pretty much switched to cell phones. Oh, and they don't like to answer their phones either. Texting has pretty much replaced talking.
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gwoollacott
4/19/2011 1:19 PM EDT
Interesting article. It is ever thus in this industry. We saw this decades ago with multifunction devices combining printing, copying, faxing, and scanning. Smartphones eat at the margins in real ways as will tablets as they catch hold in both the business and consumer spaces.
Notebook and Desktop manufacturers should be heeding the warning signals playing out in the smartphone convergence use case. It's coming to their space as well.
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Jeff.Petro
4/25/2011 10:33 AM EDT
Any true professional would balk at using a smatphone for all their needs.
A professional photographer would use a very high end digital camera or still use emulsion when blowing up pictures to larger sizes. Recording video on a smartphone is akin to those grainy & shaky videos on youtube. If you want real quality, you'd use a dedicated video device.
Wired magazine had an article on "good enough" technology about a year ago. It detailed nicely how we've given up quality for the sake of convenience. Smartphones fall perfectly into that category. They do many things that are good enough to be acceptable to many users but they do not excel at any single task. I've never owned a Flip, but it appears it was a single task device that was on the top of its market.
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HniArsh
4/25/2011 11:13 AM EDT
Interesting article.tanks a lot.
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MeirG
4/25/2011 11:55 AM EDT
Well, what can I tell you, it is the old saying (http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/4/messages/929.html): "Jack of all trades, master of none". Please note the last part...
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Duane Benson
4/25/2011 12:13 PM EDT
There are plenty of parallels to use as a comparison and predictor of the future of the stand-alone video recorder / camera / other device vs. the all-in-one smart phone.
In the music and video playback market, you can buy components or self-contained systems. In the computer world, you can buy individual components or all-in-one units. Yes, it is jack of all trades and master of none. That's not good enough for a lot of people, but it is good enough for quite a few people.
If you need pro-quality of any of the specific capabilities, you will likely buy a stand-alone version of that. If the quality offered in a smart-phone is good enough for you, then you'll likely go for the convenience of the smart phone.
In terms of quality, a lot of people talk about the limited quality of many of the camera phones. Again, take a step back a few years. There were high-quality 35mm and larger format cameras. There were also plenty of point-and-shoot moderate quality 35mm cameras, 110, 126 and Polaroid cameras sold. Compare the quality of the latter four and you'll probably come out at about a 1 Mpixel or lower digital equivalent.
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Code Monkey
4/25/2011 12:21 PM EDT
Flip was also facing competition from still cameras. More and more of them have a setting for video. Maybe Cisco didn't want to get sucked into a cutthroat digital camera market and found the tax writeoff more palatable. If the death of Flip opens a niche, surely someone will step in to fill it.
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