Commentary: Smartphones Did Not Kill the Flip Discussion

[Jamison Cush]

When Cisco abruptly shuttered its Flip pocket camcorder division this week, armchair analysts attributed the pocket camcorder's demise to competition from video-capable smartphones. However, a closer look reveals that this is probably not the case.

Read the full content of this Article: Commentary: Smartphones Did Not Kill the Flip

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[Andy Stanton]

Thanks, Jamison, what you're saying make a lot of sense. Smartphones are a long way from getting to the point where they can take beautiful, HD movies with stereo sound like a camcorder and sharp, clear colorful high resolution pictures equivalent to at least a decent digital camera. Until they get there, I'm sure there will be a market for camcorders and digital cameras.

[CallMeBC]

I registered mostly to give kudos on having one of very few articles that actually described the Cisco-Flip situation correctly, and was also easily the most complete. The general news media, from the New Yorker to the WSJ, and even supposed tech sites like CNET, made a complete botch of the story. They apparently took Cisco's talking points at face value and didn't bother to do an iota of fact checking, however elementary, and were generally so clueless about the market that oftentimes it would appear as though they didn't even know Flip had competitors.

While it may seem reasonable that it took a specialized digital camera review site to finally come up with insightful and factual piece on the matter, this wasn't a particularly complicated story to research even for someone not that familiar with cameras and video tech. Which makes me wonder at least if this type of news "coverage" is more typical than not, then what might this mean to more complex and murkier topics like health care reform, foreign policy, and such. Do you really have to find a nuclear power engineering journal to find out what's the true situation in Japan?

Anyway, philosophical ramblings aside or not, that was a good piece.