Cisco’s consumer ambitions have been playing out in real time for a while now, but developments this week — including a Cisco tablet, home energy management box and speculation about adding videoconferencing to its Flip camera — show it placing real bets.
Engadget had some intersting tidbits on that last rumor, citing an interview with Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group:
De Beer strongly hints at a WiFi enabled Flip Video camera by the end of 2010. While he didn’t say it in so many words, he did say, “We didn’t buy Flip to have it be only a video recorder,” adding, “I look forward to Christmas,” when asked about a possible timeline. That seems clear enough.
Connected Planet’s take,
Rich Karpinski:
Adding Wi-Fi (or maybe even whispernet 3G) capabilities to a device like the Flip camera brings Cisco’s purchase of that popular video camera full circle, making it not just about video side-loaded onto (Cisco-powered) telco networks, but high-bandwidth network communications in and of itself. Certainly the rest of Cisco’s emerging device portfolio is all about communications and networking.
When I talked with Cisco’s home energy team on their launch this week, they were quick to point out that their ultimate entry point into the consumer space remains the home (Wi-Fi) network, where it already sells millions of routers. Whatever user interface it — or its partners or rivals — push, the home user is likely to jump onto their in-home Wi-Fi network and out through their ISP connection into the cloud. All of which means that it doesn’t really matter what that end device or user interface looks like. Cisco has now placed itself in the equation with both in the home — and obviously out in the network as well.
That’s our take on this. Let us know what you think in the comments section below: