Here’s Your New – And Obsolete – Flip
No Flippin’ Way! My wife bought me a HD Flip when our son was born less than seven months ago. Now it’s about to become as obsolete as Kodak Disc film (and Kodak Disc cameras!).
Cisco announced yesterday it was pulling the plug on Flip, the mini digital camcorder made by a company it acquired for $590 million just two years ago, Pure Digital.
Cisco said Flip was losing ground to copycat versions of the video camera, which plug direct into your computer via a built-in USB cable. They also cited rising smartphone technology: Why have a separate video camera when you can shoot video right from your phone?
RIP, Flip.
This I can tell you. As cool as Flip is, and as easy as it is to use (the Flip has built-in software so you can edit video while it’s still on your camera), it has some setbacks.
One setback was how fragile they are. I inherited the Chief Marketer Group’s Flip, and it was great for shooting quick interviews at shows. But if the camera suddenly wasn’t readable by your computer – or any computer – you just had a glorified handheld video player that you could just show off at parties.
Another setback: In my case, my HD Flip is too high-tech for my laptop, my wife’s laptop or my work laptop. If you’re playing back video, it’s all choppy because it’s shot in HD, and my computers are not.
The bad thing is, we at Multichannel Merchant had been preaching to the audience about how easy it is to shoot product video, interviews, v-logs and whatnot with a Flip.
Hard to see a collapse like this coming, especially since the product’s been seeing double-digit sales increase.
