R.I.P. Flip

A quick moment of silence for my favorite hand cam the Flip. Yesterday Cisco announced it was closing down its division of Flip, a fun little handheld camcorder, as part of the restructuring of its consumer business unit. Cisco purchased Pure Digital, the maker of the Flip, in 2009 for $590 million when they were the best-selling camcorders on the market.

I can understand why the Flip is no longer ‘flipping’ people’s lids. Smart phones now are getting higher megapixel cameras and the ability to upload video to one’s website of choice is much easier with the phone than moving the videos from Flip to computer to web. I also expect that smart phones will kill the pocket camera industry as well here soon.

I will continue to use my HD Flip for my Youtube channel, but am sad that I won’t be upgrading to a newer version of this handy little pocket recorder in the future. R.I.P. Flip.