Chad Hardin: Flip Video was killed on eve of FlipLive launch

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Flip Video was killed on eve of FlipLive launch

UPDATED: Could much delayed tech be cause of closure?
Flip Video RIP

While many are still trying to get their heads around Cisco's decision to close the Flip Video arm of its business, others are digging a little deeper, and some have found a possible reason for the closure.?Flip Video, you see, was shut down a day before FlipLive was to be launched.

FlipLive, which Pocket-lint first reported on back in November 2009, was to be the name for a new type of camcorder, one that streamed live images, via Wi-Fi, onto the Internet. It was also designed so that you could post any recorded footage straight to a server without having to download it through the USB connection first.

It was also due to, finally, be launched on 13 April.

However, now that the entire Flip Video business was been closed down, regardless of it still posting strong sales figures, that project is dead too. And the date of the closure? 12 April. Coincidence?

Neither we nor David Pogue of the New York Times think so: "It isn’t true at all that nobody’s buying Flip camcorders," he says in his latest blog entry. "So far, 7 million people have bought them. Only a month ago, I was briefed by a Flip product manager on the newest model, which was to hit the market yesterday. He showed me a graph of the Flip’s sales; Flips now represent an astonishing 35 percent of the camcorder market.

"But there’s a second part of the tragedy, too, something that nobody knows. That new Flip that the product manager showed me was astonishing. It was called FlipLive, and it added one powerful new feature to the standard Flip: live broadcasting to the Internet."

So, could Flip have been killed off so that Cisco could use FlipLive technology in future projects?

In the words of Hong Kong Phooey, "could be!"

UPDATE: Gizmodo.com has uncovered a picture of the FlipLive. Yep, it looks like a Flip, but with a Wi-Fi button on it.