Cisco Umi Users Count Down to January 31
Cisco Umi Users Count Down to January 31 by UCStrategies Staff
Users of Cisco’s high-definition video conferencing Umi technology have around two weeks to download and save their stored videos. On January 31, the hardware will become unusable and the sale of the video service will be permanently halted. Support for existing Umi users continues.
“You can continue to use Umi service up to 11:59 pm PT on January 31st,” Cisco wrote on the Umi webpage. “If you want to save videos you have stored on umiconnect.com, you must download them prior to January 31.”
The company then went on to offer their support team’s number so that Umi users can get information about a recycling program.
“While we are ending the sale of Umi, the Umi service remains unchanged,” wrote a representative for Cisco, in an email to CRN. “Existing customers will continue to be able to use the service to make calls to other Umi subscribers or to Google video chat accounts.”
For two years, there is not much of a market adoption going Umi’s way. Getting traction on the consumer market is impeded by Umi’s relatively high price point and competition from several free alternatives like Skype. When it was released in October 2010, the 1080p-consumer-telepresence system cost $599 and came with a monthly $24.99 service fee.
Umi is part of Cisco’s Emerging Business Group, which is led by Cisco senior vice president Marthin De Beer. De Beer oversees the entire Video and Collaboration portfolio of Cisco, including Cisco Collaboration and Communications, Service Provider Video Technology, Telepresence Technology, and Emerging Technologies.
Initial reports of Umi’s eventual demise began to circulate when Network World’s Larry Chaffin said that Cisco stopped selling Umi and that Best Buy heavily discounted the video conferencing units in order to quickly move them off the retail shelves.
Cisco’s various forays into the consumer market are being phased out one after the other. It can be recalled that, in April 2011, Cisco pulled the plug on its Flip line of video cameras. And through Barclays, the company is about to complete a sale for Linksys. (KOM) Link. Link. Link.