Investors, customers, and even governments listen carefully to what he says and the tone of his comments for glimpses of advice and insight. To many in the tech industry, CEO John Chambers is viewed as managerial guru and technology oracle. It has provided networking equipment to almost every large company, government entity, broadband and telephone service provider, and thousands of small and medium businesses around the globe. For more than two decades, Cisco has dominated its core markets of Internet Protocol routing and switching. Indeed, Cisco needed to do something drastic to show Wall Street that it was getting back on track. 'But I'm not surprised that they got out of the consumer business.' 'I'm very surprised that Cisco chose to simply shut down the product given what they paid for it,' said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst for Yankee Group, who has followed Cisco for more than a decade. В• Cisco buys Flip Video maker for $590 millionДЄnd yet Cisco still decided to stop selling the Flip camera. В• CEO admits Cisco has lost some credibility It remains far and away the leading consumer video camera company.' According to NPD's Stephen Baker, 'there is no compelling evidence that Flip was failing. Many experts and fans of the Flip camcorder wonder why Cisco didn't try to sell the business unit, especially since the Flip products are considered market leaders. That said, $590 million is nothing to sneeze at.

In fact, Cisco spent a total of nearly $6 billion to acquire Tandberg and Starent Networks that same year. While not a small acquisition, it was by no means huge by Cisco standards. 'As we move forward, our consumer efforts will focus on how we help our enterprise and service provider customers optimize and expand their offerings for consumers, and help ensure the network's ability to deliver on those offerings.'Д¬isco bought Pure Digital, the maker of the Flip camera, in 2009 for $590 million. 'We are making key, targeted moves as we align operations in support of our network-centric platform strategy,' Cisco CEO John Chambers said in a statement. The reason? The company said it is strategically realigning its business to focus on selling its core products.

It's easy to understand why Internet infrastructure giant Cisco Systems needed to get out of the consumer electronics business, but did it have to send a popular product, like to the Flip camcorder, to an early grave?Д¬isco on Tuesday announced that it will stop making the Flip camera, a popular pocket-sized video camera it bought only a couple of years ago from a company called Pure Digital.

Cisco flip video camera charger