Dang, it! This was allegedly a story about a product achievement, not a failure. Pure Digital created the low-cease, enormously portable video digicam marketplace some years ago, after which it was offered for a 1/2 one thousand million U.S. Bucks through the networking large Cisco. Cisco is full of smart, bright product managers who must raise this hit product into outer space. But they failed to, and now the Flip video digital camera is going away; what took place?
Why I Loved The Flip Video Camera
So I’m inclined to ‘fess up – I have a Flip video digicam. In truth, I so fell in love with this product that I sold one early on while it became owned by Prime Digital. However, after some time of traveling around in my pocket all the time, the screen failed. I got a Kodak Zi8 to replace it partly because the Zi8 had a feature that the Flip in no way did – it had a jack that allowed it to be used with an external microphone.
I kept my eye on the Flip through the years because its small length still seduced me. I by no means again offered one surely as it truly seemed to trade – the Flip that is being supplied these days positively looks the same as the Flip that I bought numerous years ago. Sure, they’ve come out with an HD model and a few pretty “skins” that allow you to customize it; however, that appears to be approximately it.
What Went Wrong Between Cisco And The Flip
It appears as though the cause that the Flip product line did not do properly beneath control through Cisco is because of preventable unit situations: the Flip changed into an awful purchase selection for Cisco, and then Cisco did a negative job of coping with the product once they had it. The product line might have survived this type of mistake but couldn’t conquer both.
The Wrong Decision
Cisco must not have purchased the Flip product line. Sure, at the time, it was regarded as an excellent concept. Cisco’s John Chambers introduced that Cisco is buying Pure Digital to sell products that could create content that might drive the want for bigger networks – Cisco’s core commercial enterprise.
However, what became overlooked in all the sparkling press releases turned out that Cisco offered Pure Digital now, not because they had been in a first-rate “adjacent marketplace,” but because Cisco’s center enterprise changed slowly. Because of this mistake, Cisco observed itself in a market that genuinely didn’t recognize anything about – client electronics. The forces that drive this market are unlike those that power Cisco’s foremost organization networking market.
Additionally, Cisco’s concept that their logo call conveys exceptional innovation in the company market might help sell more Flip video cameras. It failed, too. I, for one, don’t partner with Cisco with domestic products and might alternatively purchase something from Sony or Apple before I buy something from Cisco. Finally, Cisco’s thoughts about using the Flip product line to sell its other products become a pipe dream. People buying a US$100 video digital camera aren’t the same people purchasing a US$25,000 excessive-quit router.
Bad Product Decisions
Did I mention that the Flip product line appeared stuck in a time-warp? In the quick transferring discipline of consumer electronics, this is the worst factor that can show up. The Flip quite mowed over with the advent of smartphones: Apple and Android merchandise keep getting higher and higher every couple of months at doing what the Flip does.
The Cisco product managers could have saved the Flip. Just like the parents over at MySpace, they might have specialized in preventing the delivery from happening. One way to try this could be to work hard to contain social networking capabilities. Imagine if you could shoot a video of your dog barking a Christmas tune, then hit a button and have it routinely uploaded to each YouTube and your Facebook account. But that by no means came about.
Finally, the product never moved on. There turned into in no way a compelling excessive-give-up Flip product that I saw in magazines that triggered me to pause and look longingly at (e., G. The iPad 2) considering what I should do with it. The Cisco product managers would have had to be careful here, but things like an excellent zoom lens, Wi-Fi connectivity, and perhaps even an apps shop only for the Flip might have done the trick. We’ll never recognize.
What All Of This Means For You
When a business enterprise desires to develop its bottom line, buying another company to get a hit product sure looks like an easy way to make this show up. However, the extremely successful Cisco has just proved that this may certainly be a risky manner to do things.
Their purchase of the Flip video camera product line turned wrong in several ways. Although the product was warm once they sold it, the destiny was already cloudy as smartphones kept getting smarter and inexpensive. The lack of compelling high-end capabilities or social networking tie-ins decreased purchaser interest in carrying this greater digital machine. Finally, Cisco failed to know much about the purchaser market they have been stepping into.
It all comes down to doing the primary product manager homework we’ve all been taught to do. You need to check the market and recognize what need they are trying to fill. Then, you want to test your product and make a few hard choices about how you will fill that want higher than everyone else. It cost Cisco over US$500M to analyze this lesson, allowing the rest of the people to study from their mistakes.
