Cisco Dumps the Linksys Brand
Posted: July 28th, 2007 | Author: Garrett Smith | Filed under: VoIP News | 3 Comments »Cisco Inches Closer to the Consumer
It is not everyday that a company decides to shut-down one of it’s most prominent brand names. Then again, not every company is Cisco.
According to Cisco CEO John Chambers, Cisco will be discontinuing the use of the Linksys brand name in favor of the Cisco namesake. Overall, I don’t really see the benefit for Cisco in doing this. While it has been known for some time that Cisco is hot to trot on getting into the home with the Cisco namesake, consumers know Linksys, they do not know Cisco.
I wonder how much Cisco is going to have to pay in order to build the Cisco brand name in the consumer space. My guess is that the amount is one that would make anyone wonder why the would retire the Linksys brand name. As the old adage goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Guess that methodology does not exist at Cisco.
It cost’s millions upon millions to build a consumer brand. This is a dangerous strategy that could really backfire in the retail channels.
I bet they spend more than a billion on re-branding Linksys products as Cisco products.
I think the biggest obstacle will be that consumers who know Cisco as a high-end enterprise level solution and will perceive their consumer offerings to be over-priced just based on their premium brand name in other spaces.
D-Link, Netgear and the like have a real opportunity to steal some business.
Recently there was a job opening in GigaOm (http://gigaomjobs.com/a/jbb/job-details/12109?return-url=%252Fa%252Fjbb%252Ffind-jobs%253Fsb%253D1%2526sbo%253D1) for Director, Corporate Business development Consumer. Likely these two are related.