Cisco Cius sees us no more
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Cius tablet
Cisco is pulling back from its Cius tablet computer and all but abandoning it.
OJ Winge, the SVP of TelePresence Technology at Cisco, has blogged that the Android-powered Cius is heading towards the exit because employees of its business customers are bringing their own, consumer-style, devices to the office; iPad tablets and the like.
He writes:
Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor, and no further enhancements will be made to the current Cius endpoint beyond what’s available today. However, as we evaluate the market further, we will continue to offer Cius in a limited fashion to customers with specific needs or use cases.
Consumers can't buy Cius tablets in the places they buy their tablets as Cisco has no substantial Cius presence in the popular entail/etail channels.
Cius was conceived of as a collaboration device for business users, not as a content consumption device for consumers. As such business users don't want it.
Cisco's interest in tablets is in being "committed to delivering a new collaborative workspace that meets our customer’s needs and empowers users to work their way—anytime, anywhere and on any device." The Cius tablet, an endpoint, is too restrictive for users.
Cisco intends to provide collaboration software usable by other supplier's end-point devices, with Winge saying the company intends to "double down on software offerings, like Jabber and WebEx, that provide the anytime, anywhere, and any device experiences."
Congrats to Cisco for killing this dead duck of a device. Cius has been fatally injured by the iPad and other consumer tablets scrabbling along behind it. Windows tablets will bury it in the same graveyard where you can find the Flip pocket video recorder.
Cius came, Cisco saw, Cius went. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Proves the real reason for tablet computers:
Obviously, but that isn't anything new. If IT tools were only about functionality and cost efficiency, every company in the world would run Ubuntu client OSs with something like Lotus for e-mail, collab, spreadsheet, word processing, etc.
Cisco, the switch king
Cisco keeps trying to reinvent itself with all of these consumer style devices so they are thought of as the "human network" instead of "the plumbing guys"... but they are the plumbing guys. I assume that they assume the switch empire is not going to last forever with all of these new switch-router competitors offering the same basic products at half of their prices.
ipad? Nope.
Ipad had nothing to do with it. The way I see it, there's several scenarios, but none result in anyone buying a Cius.
For just some end user buying a Cius, they aren't in physical stores or the usual online stores, so the customer is not going to even see it. At over $900, if they did see it of course they'd have sticker shock and not buy it. Result, no Cius sales.
Business expects employees to bring their own device? See above, result -- no Cius sales.
Finally, in the case of the business supplying the device.. businesses will suck it up and pay Cisco's prices for switches and such, because they really don't want their ethernet to crash and it's kind of a one-time investment. Tablets? Not really, the Cisco is too much for what it is compared to the numerous cheap tablets on the market. Result, again no Cius sale.
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