January 16th, 2006
My three suggestions for Cisco's consumer electronics plans
As the Reuters newswire service reports today, the London-based Financial Times newspaper says that networking giant Cisco Systems is planning to be more aggressive in the consumer electronics market.
The article says that Cisco sees phones, radios and home theater equipment that links to the Internet as new product opportunities.
"Consumer electronics companies have been able to compete on a stand-alone device, but the dynamics of the market are changing, " Cisco chief development officer Charles Giancarlo told the FT. "The Internet and new networking requirements are enough of a disruptor for us to enter a new market."
That got me to thinking. What kind of Cisco (or Linksys)-branded devices might we see that will be consistent with this revised product-line vision?
Offhand I can think of three:
Consumer-grade VoIP phones, likely sold in partnership with IM-grown-up VoIP service offerings looking to extend their functionality beyond softphone-and-earpiece. It might even be a scaled-down version of the Cisco IP Phone 7985G, which in its current incarnation, looks like this:
Radios that will be able to access Web-based streaming media content and then play that content over home entertainment speakers;
Networkable projection screens that could distribute digital video content throughout the home.
I am sure some of you can think of additional ways in which Cisco can execute their consumer electronics vision.
Got any ideas? Post a TalkBack!
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
