Imagine if they had bothered to put an ethernet jack on it, or wifi in it, or made it time-lapse capable out of the box. Or made the whole thing USB-stick-sized. There are so many things you can do with cheap cameras that you can't do with an expensive camera phone - the problem here is a total lack of vision.
(and yeah, I'm aware of IP cams, and their wretched ActiveX-only interfaces, and their price range, and they don't fill the spaces I'm talking about).
I agree, they could have gone in a lot of directions with an inexpensive camera. I guess the problem was that Cisco wanted the mainstream market - and they weren't going to go after the various niche markets like: timelapses, infrared, fast shutter cams (e.g. skateboarding tricks), sport cams (e.g. mountain biking, longboarding)...
Or maybe Cisco didn't want any competition for their line of rather plain, low-quality home security IP cameras.
(and yeah, I'm aware of IP cams, and their wretched ActiveX-only interfaces, and their price range, and they don't fill the spaces I'm talking about).