Flip, makers of the popular Mino camcorder, is to be axed by most recent owners, Cisco. What was the cause of Flip’s demise? The integration of high-quality video capture into smartphones. Unfortunately, it looks like more companies like Flip will see their demise, as our smartphones start to do more and more. What’s even worse is that the termination of Flip will result in the loss of over 500 jobs, as well as the death of potentially brilliant cameras that haven’t even been released (such as the wifi-enabled unit that popped up). So if cameras like the Flip are being killed off by the smartphone, what’s next? The super high speed evolution of the smartphone certainly has its advantages, but as we’ve seen from the fate of Flip, there will be casualties along the way.
(via Engadget)
So they bought Flip back in 2009 for $590 for a company which they are ditching after just 2 years? Madness! I know Flip will have some valuable patents which may come in use for Cisco, but that isn’t a great return on investment.
What Cisco would be best off doing now is to try and milk the Flip brand on to Smartphones like Kodak did on feature phones with their cameras. Cisco should look to partner with say Motorola to offer a “Phone with Flip Video”. The emphasis would be on high quality video recording with say a Flip branded video editing app and social tools to share the video.
my desire and most htc phones i know can take average to decent video but the sound quality is poor. I bought an early genertion flip for blogs etc and needed good qualitiy sound. HTC Desire couldnt cut it. heres hoping the htc sensation lives up to its name as a multi media smartphone i might go for an early upgrade.
Tameside Eye has a point, it’s simply not necessary any more, I’m sure in 5 years compact cameras will have the same destiny where lens size and quality problems will be solved in the software and cmos sensors.