This was a big deal before the rise of the smartphone. No cables. Great video (relatively speaking) even in low-light conditions. Good audio. Simple interface. Inexpensive. I used it for work (online publishing) and my kids loved it, too.
Compared to the Japanese camcorders that required cables, cassettes, and an 80-page manual to figure out, the Flip was a no-brainer for people who just wanted an easy way to shoot video and get it on their computer.
But, as others have noted, what the heck was Cisco thinking? IIRC, the company wanted to push into expensive "telepresence" systems but I don't see how the Flip fit into this vision.
ETA: My pet theory is Cisco corporate strategists or the CEO believed the spin put out by Flip and its investors. Maybe another company was circling, too.
Around the time of the Pure Digital acquisition, Cisco was making a push into the home. They started buying up consumer brands like Flip and Linksys. I can't speak to why--perhaps their enterprise growth had slowed due to the recession? Anyways, they floundered with the consumer brands for a while before killing them (Flip) or selling them off (Linksys). People hypothesize that the rise of smartphones killed off Flip, but I really believe it was the Cisco acquisition that killed it. I think Flip could have otherwise survived for a few more years out of a tail of slow adopters before pivoting to a GoPro-type market.
I worked on the Flip Mino, but as a consultant, not a Pure Digital employee. I followed them fairly closely, but didn't have much inside information, so the above is just my own hypothesis. Though OP's article seems to have come to the same conclusion.
One of the thing Flip did right was device-video orientation. Even though the device was held vertically which fit naturally in a hand, the video was recorded horizontally. The original iPhone may have done a disservice to the world by matching the orientation of the camera to the screen.
I have a feeling that someday many of our old pictures and videos archived to google photos or hard drives will be consumed on large widescreen devices. When that time comes I think we will all regret the vertical videos of today and wonder what the heck we were thinking. I imagine Apple could add a setting to the iPhone easily enough to never take portrait mode video.
The iPhone has a screen that takes up most of its face. By aligning the camera and screen, they allow you to use the full screen. Can you imagine how annoying it would be to only be able to use ~30% of your screen to shoot video?
Sure, it means the video doesn't align with most computer monitors. But a ton of phone-generated content is being consumed on other phones in its native vertical layout (e.g. on Snapchat). And sometimes vertical layout fits the subject better anyway; we're just not used to seeing it for video because video formats have been stuck at 4:3 or 16:9 for the entire history of consumer video. Photographers have used portrait aspect ratios for over a century.
I actually had one of these and really liked it (https://jakeseliger.com/2011/05/08/will-we-ever-find-out-wha...). It's a shame that the company was bought and then shuttered by Cisco. Most cameras today still don't do the kinds of sharing activities that Flip was ready to roll out back in 2010 - 11.
I thought of GoPro pretty immediately when I saw the title and skimmed the article. I have a GoPro, despite not being the most active person in the world and definitely not needing the outdoorsiness of one, but having a small 4K camera with good battery and large storage that weighs almost nothing is appealing to me, and something I've used a few times now. I don't need the instant sharing stuff as much, but if I did, the GoPro app would facilitate that - as annoying as it is to have to log in to use a camera.
From a technology standpoint maybe, but very different branding and very different marketing focus. Arguably GoPro had relative little other than marketing to a specific demographic (and all the promo and channel activity associated with it) although it did have waterproof/rugged vs. cell phones.
It's not the marketing and branding. It's the tech.
Cell phones don't attach to helmets and other sports gear: too big, not rugged, not waterproof, not aerodynamic. And it's really hard to text your friends while the phone's strapped to your head.
I didn't make my point clearly. Flip could have built a waterproof action cam very easily. But the hard thing GoPro did was marketing it, not building it.
I also agree that action cams have a market niche that cell phones can't easily fill. Though that seems to have declined as a lot of people have realized they like the idea of being great adventurers but they don't actually base jump :-)
We had one of those at work. It was surprisingly handy to be able to put in your own disk take some pictures, pop out the disk, and hand the camera back. We could also take some pictures for a client and just hand them a floppy while at their office or in the field without having to worry about finding a computer and copying them over.
Most people don't have piles of SDcards just lying around, nor do most people feel happy with just giving away the SDcard they happen to have in their camera if someone wants to keep a few photos they took.
I don't know about current cameras, but most of my old cameras have the SD card slot on the inside of the battery compartment or somewhere else kinda inconvenient (and forget about it on most phones - if it's accessible at all).
The thing about the Mavica was that the floppy just popped in and out on the side, just like a floppy drive. Nothing difficult about swapping in a new floppy.
Now - if your world of cheap SDs in 10 packs came about, hopefully the manufacturers would put the card slot in an easy/intuitively accessible areas (and make it easy to pop one in and out - likely using one of the auto-locking push in to release mechanisms).
At this point, though, it doesn't really matter - your phone backs the pics up to the cloud, it's easy to share them from there (or just click on the pic(s) and "share" via umpteen billion options).
It's a nice thought, and I know you don't mean it seriously - the world's moved on, I guess...
USB yes; but many SD slots have the "press in to lock", "press in again to unlock and remove" (even micro-sd). Only when it's something cheaper (like a reader dongle) are they generally just a friction fit.
Wasn't it something like 1 or 2 megapixels? For many purposes, that's not bad at all.
I still keep around a few old Kodak DC3200 cameras, which have a 1.3 mp resolution for use in my shop. One of those was my second digital camera (well, as long as you don't count the various video digitizers I've owned over the years - starting with a DS-69B on my TRS-80 Color Computer); my first real digital camera was this el-cheapo something-or-another that took grainy 320x240 images.
I keep and use the DC3200s in my shop because I don't care if I handle them while my hands are grimy or whatnot, while they still take a decent picture. Their only downside is that they use CF cards, but I still have a ton of those anyhow.
I had the lesser model of Mavica that I think could only take pictures in 640x480; at least, it seems like all of my pictures with it are 640x480. Not sure now whether it could do 800x600 or whether that was just the more expensive model.
Mine is 1.3, it takes images at a VGA resolution. A single image at full res practically fills up the floppy disk, I've got to shoot at a lower quality if I want to take more images.
Missing part of the history: Flip was a spin off of the CVS One Time Use Camcorder that was hacked to be reusable. Hackers showed there was a market for this in the first place.
Additionally, I would attribute the rise of the smart phone more than the Cisco acquisition as the end of the Flip.
The weirdest part about the flip was that it almost seemed like Cisco acquired it to kill it off. It had such a strong ad campaign, and then it just evaporated?
Looking back at that moment in time, it seemed a little too early to catch the wave of youtube fame and stardom, but had it been a little later, and a little more refined (and maybe with some endorsement deals or product/service alignment) it seems as though it could have been the kind of product that could land itself in the hands of most youtubers as the preferred video recorder for capture and uploading.
But I guess high-end cell phones and the nightmare of Windows 8 (and weak or absent linux support) probably also had a hand in sealing the flip's fate.
Cisco has tended to have issues with consumer brands. With respect to the Flip specifically, it was hot for a time but probably ultimately not a long-term product niche. By the time, everyone was taking and sharing video, they were doing it on cell phones. There's still a market for standalone video but it's mostly high-end (and often it's DSLRs).
Compared to the Japanese camcorders that required cables, cassettes, and an 80-page manual to figure out, the Flip was a no-brainer for people who just wanted an easy way to shoot video and get it on their computer.
But, as others have noted, what the heck was Cisco thinking? IIRC, the company wanted to push into expensive "telepresence" systems but I don't see how the Flip fit into this vision.
ETA: My pet theory is Cisco corporate strategists or the CEO believed the spin put out by Flip and its investors. Maybe another company was circling, too.
I worked on the Flip Mino, but as a consultant, not a Pure Digital employee. I followed them fairly closely, but didn't have much inside information, so the above is just my own hypothesis. Though OP's article seems to have come to the same conclusion.
Sure, it means the video doesn't align with most computer monitors. But a ton of phone-generated content is being consumed on other phones in its native vertical layout (e.g. on Snapchat). And sometimes vertical layout fits the subject better anyway; we're just not used to seeing it for video because video formats have been stuck at 4:3 or 16:9 for the entire history of consumer video. Photographers have used portrait aspect ratios for over a century.
Even if Cisco hadn't killed Flip when they did, this decade's smartphones would have not long after.
GoPro did pretty well for in world full of smartphones. The Flip could have become that if there had been some innovative people in charge,
Cell phones don't attach to helmets and other sports gear: too big, not rugged, not waterproof, not aerodynamic. And it's really hard to text your friends while the phone's strapped to your head.
I also agree that action cams have a market niche that cell phones can't easily fill. Though that seems to have declined as a lot of people have realized they like the idea of being great adventurers but they don't actually base jump :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica#Digital_still_came...
Same thing with optical. I can get a spindle of 50 blanks, so handing off a couple would not bother me.
The thing about the Mavica was that the floppy just popped in and out on the side, just like a floppy drive. Nothing difficult about swapping in a new floppy.
Now - if your world of cheap SDs in 10 packs came about, hopefully the manufacturers would put the card slot in an easy/intuitively accessible areas (and make it easy to pop one in and out - likely using one of the auto-locking push in to release mechanisms).
At this point, though, it doesn't really matter - your phone backs the pics up to the cloud, it's easy to share them from there (or just click on the pic(s) and "share" via umpteen billion options).
It's a nice thought, and I know you don't mean it seriously - the world's moved on, I guess...
One thing we have lost with moving to USB and SD slots.
8-bit guy talking about it, and a few others.
I still keep around a few old Kodak DC3200 cameras, which have a 1.3 mp resolution for use in my shop. One of those was my second digital camera (well, as long as you don't count the various video digitizers I've owned over the years - starting with a DS-69B on my TRS-80 Color Computer); my first real digital camera was this el-cheapo something-or-another that took grainy 320x240 images.
I keep and use the DC3200s in my shop because I don't care if I handle them while my hands are grimy or whatnot, while they still take a decent picture. Their only downside is that they use CF cards, but I still have a ton of those anyhow.
I'm positively spoiled by my Sony A6000.
Additionally, I would attribute the rise of the smart phone more than the Cisco acquisition as the end of the Flip.
Looking back at that moment in time, it seemed a little too early to catch the wave of youtube fame and stardom, but had it been a little later, and a little more refined (and maybe with some endorsement deals or product/service alignment) it seems as though it could have been the kind of product that could land itself in the hands of most youtubers as the preferred video recorder for capture and uploading.
But I guess high-end cell phones and the nightmare of Windows 8 (and weak or absent linux support) probably also had a hand in sealing the flip's fate.