Cisco to Kill Linksys Brand Name 262
Mav sent in this article that opens, "In a roundtable with the European press, John Chambers confirmed the "end of life" of the Linksys name, being replaced by the new and redesigned Cisco branding." He explains, "It will all come over time into a Cisco brand. The reason we kept Linksys' brand because it was better known in the US than even Cisco was for the consumer. As you go globally there's very little advantage in that."
So what happens now (Score:5, Insightful)
One word - Inprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Borland - Inprise - Borland.
Should have been the plan from the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what happens now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what happens now (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Should have been the plan from the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
With something like OpenWRT loaded onto such a device, somewhat more esoteric and useful stuff can be done. But even then, it's just a Linux box, whereas "full-featured" Cisco (non-Linksys) routers run IOS.
Oh, well.
Back on topic: My mother knows what a Linksys router is for. If the one at her house failed, she would be able to produce an equivalent replacement from Wal-Mart without my assistance. Abandoning the Linksys brand for everything to say Cisco will smash this brand-recognition and loyalty; she'd be just as likely to buy one that says "Belkin" as "Cisco."
Re:So what happens now (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly. In fact, are they actually changing the name because so many consumers now associate the name Linksys with horrible phone support?
Enter your worst story below. Mine is probably the friends who literally couldn't understand anything the presumably offshore tech was saying. They're both well-travelled people who are good with accents, and she's a multi-lingual legal secretary for chissakes. They couldn't understand a word, and weren't even sure what his true language might be. "Sounded like he had a mouthful of rocks and a head cold."
What a stupid idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong - most Cisco stuff is still pretty damn good - but there are fairly reasonable alternatives nowadays and a significant amount of their stuff sells because their customers are running all / mostly Cisco infrastructure or someone recommended Cisco.
Putting their name on shitty consumer level DSL routers and 4 port switches isn't going help in the recommendation department - some of you know that purchasing decisions can be easily affected by some person who isn't all that technical (I saw Cisco phones on 24, they must be great!, etc)"
Of course, that works the other way too. I've seen people reject proposals w/ 3com because some shitty 3com branded consumer level lemon caused them aggravation at home. 3com isn't top of the line, but it was pretty damn good a few years ago.
One Cisco gets their first lemon product - and they will, because consumer equipment is cheap crap mass produced by peasant labour - that will leave a lasting bad taste in the mouths of the people who will make future decisions. And while Cisco consumer stuff might be a bit better than the other crap on the market, "not being as bad as ___________" is a really crappy goal to strive for (and when your competitors suck, it doesn't make a great advertising slogan either)
I don't expect prices to go anywhere but up either - when Cisco started putting their name all over Linksys boxes, the prices went through the roof (unmanaged, stock 16 port switches for $300+?). Same shit, but twice(+) the money. Not cool. People aren't stupid, they will eventually catch on.
I bet some consultant asshole and some fucking buzzwords had something to do with this.
"Standardized Branding" ftw.
Value of a brand == Don't throw 'em away (Score:4, Insightful)
I was listening to a show on CBC radio (gov't-funded NPR-like radio in Canada) a month or so back and they had a marketing guy talking about the value of brands. The speaker asserted that even bad brands have tremendous value, because they need to be focused, not established. Establishing a brand takes years and a shit-pile of money, with no guarantees, said he. From this guy's perspective, there is nothing more difficult in marketing and sales than establishing a brand, where a brand is a gut feeling about products+prior experience+what you've heard+service+etc. It's all that stuff that is evoked when you hear the company name, see the logo, think about buying a product.
This is completely off my cuff, but I think Linksys is a very established brand in residential markets, where 'Cisco' isn't. My girlfriend's son (first marriage stuff) even called his wireless router 'the linksys' last week ... and his wireless router is labeled by Dlink.
He sure as shit didn't call it 'my cisco'.
I call this move a mistake. Here's a Slideshare doc I cam across a few months back; the writer can't spell 'Porsche' correctly, but nonetheless I think it's a good intro blurb:
http://www.slideshare.net/coolstuff/the-brand-gap [slideshare.net]
Black and Decker and DeWalt again? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same may happen to Cisco. Sometimes it's best to have a "professional-grade" brand versus a consumer-grade one.
Click here [reveries.com] to learn a little bit more about the Black and Decker and DeWalt name game.
Re:So what happens now (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I was wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
This may be modded as flamebait but back in the days when I ran an ISP, I know for a fact that if I had purchased Cisco products instead of Allied Telesyn, Livinston (Lucent) and others I would have run bankrupt, the price difference was 1:3 between Cisco and the other brands and I simply couldn't afford it. They are going to mess up the skinny athletic Linksys with their big fat lethargic ways... For me, Cisco is a brand name like 'Microsoft' but it really doesn't mean it's better...
Re:So what happens now (Score:5, Insightful)
We had in our office a little WiFi network based on those blue/purple Linksys routers. And it worked really well for couple of years. After some failures one of my colleagues decided it was time for a state-of-the-art replacement with those new silver colored Cisco/Linksys boxes. Yep, consumer pricing, but branded by Cisco.
Well, if I would get just 10 bucks for every hour he was on the phone with Cisco support or installing new firmware, I would be a rich man. Even up to stupid things that an configuration webpage for firewall port forwarding has 20 fields, but the moment you put in more than 10 entries, number 11 and higher don't work. Seems that the GUI designers didn't talk to the developers of the firewall software.
Not to mention the number of times we have to power-switch those stupid boxes (BTW, they look like grey Mac mini's). And half the time after replugging the power brick, the thing doesn't want to reboot and no lights come on. Because we have four of them, in a roaming network, I know it's not simply the failure of a single unit, but design flaws.
These are simply crappy design. Yes, they were cheap (like Linksys also always was) and yes they are Cisco branded. But definitely not professional Cisco quality!! I think Cisco should be careful, there is the chance they are dilluting their professional brand recognition with these low-cost, low-quality consumer products.
Re:Name Recognition (Score:5, Insightful)
The Linksys brand was fine! (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it was fine the way it was.
Looks like a typical manager-decission "oh, we call it cisco, it will allow us to make it more expensive"
Re:So what happens now (Score:2, Insightful)
I will not confuse price with quality. Just because big corporations tell me otherwise, I know better.
Seriously, one ought to be able to trust that a piece of hardware purchased works without hitch - no matter the price. For the free market to function, companies that produce faulty hardware should suffer for it.
Re:Well, that could be interesting. (Score:1, Insightful)
Formerly well established brand. Cisco half-killed the company when they bought it. Things turned to carp early on. Now they're going to kill it all the way. Whatever happened to that other division of Cisco, US Robotics? Remember that acquisition? A pattern becomes apparent.