Cisco Flips on Consumer Business

Cisco restructures its consumer business by shutting down Flip and burying umi into another part of the company

Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief

April 12, 2011

1 Min Read
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Cisco made some definitive moves Tuesday to help out its stagnant stock and bloated management structure by announcing the closure of its Flip video camera business, the "refocusing" of its home networking division and the integration of its "Umi" consumer video product into its Business TelePresence line.

Additionally, Cisco said it will figure out other uses for Eos -- its media hosting business -- within the company.

Cisco says these moves will result 550 job losses and charges against earnings that are "not expected to exceed $300 million during the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 2011."

While these moves aren't exactly a surprise, they do collectively show just how far flung Cisco has become over the years, drifting from its core infrastructure businesses to more consumer gadget businesses and services, where the likes of Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), D-Link Systems Inc. , Pace Micro Technology and others already have solid footing. We'll have more reporting and analysis on these moves over the next several days.

For more

  • Scrutiny Hits Cisco's Consumer Business

  • Investor Uprising at Cisco? (podcast)

  • Cisco Starts Spring Cleaning

  • Cisco Signals Major Restructuring

  • Consumers Clobber Cisco

  • Is Cisco Spread Too Thinly?



— Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

About the Author

Phil Harvey

Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Phil Harvey has been a Light Reading writer and editor for more than 18 years combined. He began his second tour as the site's chief editor in April 2020.

His interest in speed and scale means he often covers optical networking and the foundational technologies powering the modern Internet.

Harvey covered networking, Internet infrastructure and dot-com mania in the late 90s for Silicon Valley magazines like UPSIDE and Red Herring before joining Light Reading (for the first time) in late 2000.

After moving to the Republic of Texas, Harvey spent eight years as a contributing tech writer for D CEO magazine, producing columns about tech advances in everything from supercomputing to cellphone recycling.

Harvey is an avid photographer and camera collector – if you accept that compulsive shopping and "collecting" are the same.

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