| | By John Daly in Germany @ Thursday, March 19, 2009 5:52 PM
| |
| | San Francisco-based maker of networking equipment Cisco said today it wants to buy Pure Digital Technologies, a privately-owned firm also based in California's free-love capitol. Pure Digital is maker of the Flip video device, a rather hip and cheap gadget which lets people film their antics in lo-fi quality and stick it up on sites such as Youtube.com or Myspace.com. According to Cisco, Pure Digital has sold over 2 million of its various Flip devices to date. The devices come bundled with FlipShare, a proprietary software which allows users to edit video and upload it to various sites.
Cisco is going to shell out around $590 million in shares for all shares of Pure Digital. A further $15 million will be handed over to employees working at Pure Digital, to make sure they stay put and do not bugger off to work for hip companies. The company will be bundled into Cisco's consumer business unit, alongside Linkysys home networking products. Flip-master Jonathan Kaplan, CEO of Pure Digital, will be employed as a general manager of the unit.
SAN JOSE, Calif. - March. 19, 2009 - Cisco today announced its intent to acquire privately held Pure Digital Technologies Inc. San Francisco-based Pure Digital, creator of the best-selling Flip VideoTM brand, is a pioneer in developing consumer-friendly video solutions with mass-market appeal.
'The acquisition of Pure Digital is key to Cisco's strategy to expand our momentum in the media-enabled home and to capture the consumer market transition to visual networking,' claimed Ned Hooper, senior vice president of Cisco's consumer unit. Cisco stated the acquisition was part of an innovation strategy caled 'build, buy and partner,' which is aimed at taking over innovative companies and moving into new markets.
Larry Lang, a vice president at Cisco's wireless business, exemplefied Cisco's current shopping spree. He said Cisco is currently looking for applications and hadrware that doing a specific thing very well during the Dow Jones Wireless Innovations conference, where several wireless companies pitched for start-up funding. X
| |
| |  Add Comment | |
| | | |