• San Jose Mercury News, Wall Street Journal, Marketing Daily, Friday, March 20, 2009 11:16 AM

In its continuing effort to expand into consumer products and appear to be "less geeky," Cisco Systems yesterday said it will acquire mass-market product marketer Pure Digital Technologies, the maker of the slender and trendy Flip Video digital camcorder, John Boudreau reports.

"This is a great opportunity for us to extend beyond the home" and into the broader consumer market, says Charles Carmel, Cisco vp of corporate development. The Flip Video brand will remain, he says, though the company will eventually look at ways to link it to the Cisco name. Pure Digital executives are also expected to teach Cisco the language of pop tech, Carmel adds.

Acquiring a company that makes inexpensive video devices is "very un-Cisco-like," says Forrester Research analyst Nathan Safran. "But they are trying to expand. It's a smart move."

In a video sidebar to its coverage of the acquisition, the Wall Street Journal's Marissa Taylor compares the flip to the video capabilities of a Canon PowerShot digital camera and finds that the Flip is "loads of fun" but "no match" for Canon's SD880 model in quality. I happen to have a (mostly positive) "Rant" about two other Canon PowerShots in Marketing Daily this morning but admit that the thought of using the cameras' video capabilities hadn't crossed my mind until seeing this review .

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