Friday, March 20, 2009

Next Opponent for Cisco: Apple? - Digits - WSJ

A $590M bet, in the Pure Digital acquisition, and a much bigger series of bets, in terms of shifts in Cisco’s overall co-opetition stance this week.

With the addition of Pure Digital, Cisco now has several consumer products that target the living room: home networking systems it acquired from Linksys; cable boxes it got from Scientific-Atlanta; a wireless audio system that Cisco developed internally; and now Pure Digital’s Flip camcorder and related video software. Cisco has also said that it hopes to extend its high-end video conferencing technology into the home.

It isn’t a big leap to see Cisco developing a home-media hub that cobbles these pieces together—some sort of device that allows people to upload and watch videos and listen to music throughout their homes. In fact, it looks like a next logical step.

Next Opponent for Cisco: Apple? - Digits - WSJ

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