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...

Quote of the Day: Cheap CEO?

Reader Larry E. (who used to work for HP, via its Peregrine acquisition) refers to this article, and says:

You know, after the Board of directors scandals, the mess by Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurds crazy acquisition strategy and managing to destroy any real R&D, Leo Apothothacer dodging a subpeona for his first 3 months and then promptly scraring the crap out of investors by indicating he wanted to sell off the PC division, and, of course the 70 day tablet debacle, and finally Meg Whitman at a loss to do anything but writing off ridiculous amounts...massive numbers laid off...a stock price that managed to go from 60/share to 11/share...

I'm telling you, I could have ruined HP at a fraction of the cost those fancy high priced CEO's charged.

Hah!

It truly is very sad.  HP is an iconic high technology company, and used to be a place that any geek would have been proud to work at.  These days it's closer to a laughingstock, sort of like Nokia or Research in Motion...