This article doesn't mention it directly, but after reading the bit about the FlipLive makes this more likely to me: the wrong people in Cisco finally realized what Flip might be able to do. Which is replace Cisco's teleconferencing enterprise business. And doing so even a little bit would probably cost them a pretty penny, so they're dumping it to protect what they see as their "core" business.
There was never any risk of v1 of FlipLive cannibalizing the teleconferencing business - it was one-way only - no way for the 'viewers' to send a stream back to the publisher's camera. BTW - I wrote some of web software (the ActionScript) for FlipLive.
The whole premise of Cisco's teleconferencing business is maintaining the illusion that that it has to be expensive to do -- which isn't true for 80% of the market at least.
Cisco won't make billions on peddling their stuff to the 20% of the market who has a few million to drop on a telepresence system.
2 one-way connections == 1 two-way connection. Both sides just need flip and something to view it on. Even if that something was gold plated it would be cheaper than "enterprise" conferencing systems.
Interesting, yeah I hadn't thought through to the two-way part of it. And I might be totally off-base, but it just felt like it maybe it we edging close.
