
Flip Founder: People Still Want Single Purpose Devices - davidedicillo
http://gigaom.com/video/flip-founder-people-still-want-single-purpose-devices/
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officemonkey
People are willing to pay a premium for a high-end single-purpose device (eg:
a Nikon camera or a Sony professional camcorder).

But they don't need a cheap single-purpose device. Especially since their
smartphone (which they are carrying anyway) is good enough.

I bought a Flip camera back in 2008, but it was the first and last one I ever
bought. Flip and Cisco's mistake was thinking that the brand would carry the
day.

~~~
jamesbritt
_But they don't need a cheap single-purpose device._

I do.

 _Especially since their smartphone (which they are carrying anyway) is good
enough._

No it's not.

I have a G2, it plays music, movies, yada yada yada. So it would make a usable
Mp3 player. Except, _because_ it is a multi-purpose device, the controls for
Mp3 playing are intertwingled with controls for taking and making calls,
reading mail, launching other apps. That makes it really awkward to use
without looking at it.

Stuff like pausing or skipping a song is iffy if I try to do it while driving
or running. Yeah, I know, I could probably get some special cord or something
that gives me tiny controls that are slightly less awkward to use without
looking.

However, I have a nice Sansa MP3 player. Takes an SD card so I have around 6GB
for music on a $50 device. It's _really_ easy to use blindly.

In fact, I have about five MP3-player-only devices. One is for audio books.
One is for practicing violin. One has white noise to help me sleep. They're
cheap and do just what I want them to do. That's a big win.

~~~
officemonkey
You're right, a single-purpose mp3 player has a lot of utility for many of the
reasons you say.

* Easy of navigation when exercising/driving. * Cheap enough so you won't cry when it dies. * Cheap enough so you can buy multiple for different purposes.

In fact, my favorite MP3 player of all time is a 2nd Generation iPod shuffle.
It's lasted for years, it survived going through a washing machine, and it's
tiny.

OTOH, I'll argue that a good MP3 player isn't a "cheap single-purpose device",
it's just a quality single-purpose device that happens to be inexpensive. The
price of all MP3 players are so low that the difference between a really
"good" one and a really "cheap" one is 20 bucks.

You can't say the same thing about still or video cameras. The "cheap" Flip
camera has less utility than the camera on my smartphone for one reason only:
I always have my smartphone on me.

I think stand-alone GPS devices are the next thing that will be obsoleted by
smartphones. I don't see TomTom or Garmin being competitive with a smartphone
with the same satellite reception and the same maps. If I were Garmin or
TomTom I'd start putting all my eggs in the software basket rather than the
hardware basket.

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SlipperySlope
How come I don't wear a wrist watch? And I can wait to get rid of my plastic
credit cards.

Device convergence sometimes actually happens - and is good.

Sour grapes, in my opinion.

~~~
michaelpinto
Actually Swatch is still doing very well (as well as other brands) — a watch
is an fashion accessory as much something with functionality. Flip understood
that as brand, and was a notch above what you'd get on a cell phone. That gap
has narrowed, but had Cisco invested in the product my bet is that their bet
would have paid off. The problem was that Cisco had a larger agenda which
didn't match the camera. By the way as digital dominates you'll see a
specialty market for analog — everything from vinyl to paper books (just ask
any hipster kid).

