Monday, January 28, 2013

Cisco Sells Off Linksys...to Belkin???

Cisco appears to have completely given up on its various forays into consumer electronics, selling off the profitable Linksys line to Belkin.  I have no idea whether those forays actually made good business sense, but what is clear is that Cisco has been punished by investors for having done so.  The Flip video fiasco actually impacted us personally – we owned one of those things.  This sale won't impact us directly, but it saddens me.  Linksys is a solid brand, with good-to-great products at very fair prices.  Belkin is a schlocky brand, known (quite justifiably, in my own experience) for iffy products and high prices.  I suppose its possible that Belkin could leverage this acquisition to push their own reputation uphill, but somehow I suspect that the opposite is more likely.  I fully expect to see “Linksys” slapped onto Belkin's existing networking products – the electronics equivalent of lipstick on a pig...

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