Cisco had money burning a hole in their pocket and bought a some consumer stuff and then had no idea what to do with it ... so they sold most of it off, or simply discontinued it (like flip video).
That's Cisco's R&D model. Buy smaller companies with interesting tech and see if their products stick. If they do, great. If not, spit them out via sale or shut them down.
The parent commenter is saying that Cisco essentially doesn't do much outside of the acquisition.
Companies like Google or Apple do a lot of work to integrate the existing software or hardware into their lineup (e.g. Google Voice, Google Doc, Siri, Siri music search)
Yup, they took their corporate video conferencing products and tried to make a consumer version (Umi I think it was) that while cheaper than the cooperate product were still absurdly expensive.
This was all while Skype pretty well established .... it was pure insanity.
Oh man WebEx is crazy clunky software. I used it regularly for years and never got comfortable with it ... let alone that it ran in fits and starts for everyone.
Not using webEx was one of the things I actually looked forward to when I lost my last job. It's crazy that would occur to me.
Had to use WebEx on a client call once. Had to install two different packages because audio was "provided by Comcast". It was the only time ever that I saw the video, but couldn't get audio, so a coworker had to update me on Slack in real time so I knew what I was watching. Horrible.
guess what, if you use the WebEx chat program it saves your entire history in an encrypted sqlite db that you can't access after your company stops using WebEx.
I use WebEx daily and have almost no issues. That said, I work for a very large company and we have our own instance, so maybe we have something custom.
Generally speaking Cisco has largely blown the whole consumer business... repeatedly.
They just don't understand it, they're not built to run it.
They spent a ton on flip during the rise of the smartphone. Every executive probabbly had a device in their pocket that would replace the company they were buying for crazy money.
I still use my flip. It's my favorite little camcorder.
My wife uses it every day at her internship where she has to record her patients for class and supervision. She isn't allowed to use a network connected device to do the recording for HIPAA compliance.
I think the bigger problem was cellphones, especially the iPhone, gaining the ability to record decent video.
Flip filled a convenient niche for a few years until the 3GS came along with video support, after which it was useless for many consumers. This was the only reason I bought a Flip, and the only reason anyone else I know with one did.
Similarly, I think the first mainstream smartphones to record HD video wasn't until 2010. Again flip had a small window with their HD models before cellphones killed them again.
At least GoPro have (had?) a good story around their mounts and waterproofing, there was nothing in my opinion a Flip did that cellphones didn't very quickly do better.
This is true. I think the iPhone did the same thing to Garmin GPS and other single-purpose hardware companies. They all lost so much of their market.
Apple already knew people were buying and would continue to buy these things, and their innovation was just putting it all into one device. So you could buy a Garmin GPS and a Flip video camera, and end up spending $300-$500 total and carry 2 devices around, or you could just buy an iPhone 3GS for $199 and also make phone calls with it.
I'm still trying to figure out the $1,000 price tag of an iPhone nowadays however. Where is the substance behind that price? (And I own an iPhone, apple watch, iPad Pro, a Macbook Pro, and a Macbook air, so I really doo appreciate a good product, just can't comprehend the value proposition of a $1000 iPhone.)
The 16GB iPhone 3GS debuted for $199 with a contract from AT&T.
People were still going to have mobile phone contracts. The smartphone replaced their cell phone just like it replaced their Garmin GPS and their Flip video camera and their pocket planner. It was a compelling proposition.