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April 1, 2010

Cisco Convinces Press That Router Is News

I don't blame Cisco for pulling this stunt, but the company got mainstream media to buy in: Typical is this USA Today story, which follows the press release that the Cisco Valet is the company's "first consumer router," despite having purchased Linksys years ago and sold tens of millions of consumer routers during that time. The Valet has the same footprint, and likely similar innards with a new skin on top of it as most of the modern Linksys models.

Late in the story, the USA Today reporter notes the Linksys subsidiary, but has fallen for the marketing line that the USB dongle that lets you supposedly easily set up every device is somehow unique to Cisco, new, and exciting. The real news, I suppose, is that the Pure Digital team that made the Flip video recorder, acquired by Cisco, was thrown onto the home networking product line. But that's hardly a revolution in hardware, is it?

The notion of using USB drives (not one that comes with the device, necessarily) goes back several years to Microsoft's short-lived Wi-Fi product line, and some other companies--including Linksys!--let you write settings to a USB drive to move around to computers. (Amazingly, this time support comes in the first version out of the box for both Mac OS X and Windows!)

The notion of making Wi-Fi easy to set up dates back to, oh, I don't know, 1999? And it is far easier. Six years ago, I wrote "Beating the Wireless Blues" for PC World, which explained how to fix Wireless Zero Config problems in Windows XP and other troubles of the time.

At that time, about 35 percent of Wi-Fi routers bought at retail were returned to stores. Cisco says its number today is about 20 percent. (Update: Cisco says that's an industry average, not its experience.) That's closer to the return rate for all personal computer peripherals, but it also explains why Cisco is trying to change the narrative without necessarily offering anything new or different, just a further iteration of industry-wide efforts underway since Wi-Fi's inception.

2 Comments

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for your story -- however one correction - The 20% return rate that is mentioned in your article is NOT cisco's return rate - its anecdotal for the home networking market for all home networking routers in retail - not just Cisco - or Linksys in this matter.

Also your comment about the first consumer router- it should mean - first router designed specifically for the mass market. The Linksys routers and even competition were selling routers that were talking to both the "Tech savvy" user and the "Mass Market" user at the same time. We have separated them out letting Linksys now talk to the Tech User and Valet to the Mass Market user.

Thanks!
Karen Sohl
Director Corporate Communications
Cisco Consumer Products: Linksys, Valet and Flip

Thanks for the information! I'll revise the story.

The separation of brand strategies makes sense, but the actual technology, UI, and even product shape are part of ongoing improvements. I'm just saying you played the press very well on getting this so much play for an incremental change in technology.

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