Should Cisco kill the Linksys brand?

Wednesday, Aug. 1 2007 | Author: Dave

Seems like Cisco is trying to decide of the Linksys brand will continue. Oddly enough, I find myself having more trust in the Linksys brand products than most other consumer level products because my friends have said good things about them. Cisco makes me think big business, and expensive.

Here are some details from the post on GigaOM:

Cisco Systems, apparently is facing a dilemma: whether to lose to the Linksys brand name or not? Cisco bought Linksys a couple of years ago for $500 million, and it has been a good addition to the portfolio, expanding Cisco’s reach into consumer, SOHO and small and medium sized business markets. (Read: Cisco’s born again consumerism.)

CEO John Chambers has expressed his wishes many times to phase out Linksys brand, and just consolidate everything under the Cisco moniker.

What do you think, should they keep the Linksys brand?

Category: Uncategorized

6 Responses for "Should Cisco kill the Linksys brand?"

Sean

August 1st, 2007 at 5:12 pm
1

I definitely think they should keep the brand, everyone has heard of Linksys not everyone has heard of Cisco. Linksys is trusted and like it or not people talk about the Linksys routers alot! I’d like to see one person who hasn’t heard of one! Heck, I bought one because of all the talk about them!
Blazingluke

August 1st, 2007 at 5:53 pm
2

To me, the Linksys brand looks good because it has the Cisco brand on the product.

The Linksys logo does seem more consumer-friendly to me as I typically associate Cicso with business.
Super Jamie

August 1st, 2007 at 8:12 pm
3

Linksys’ consumer products are just above-average, at best. I believe if it not for the WRT and its’ open source firmware, Linksys would probably be just another brand name.

I agree with Luke, the Linksys brand looks alot better because it has Cisco tacked onto it. The fact that Cisco found Linksys good enough to purchase does speak in Linksys’ favour. However, I’d like to know if that merger was Cisco’s first choice?

The kind of person who hasn’t heard of Cisco is the kind of person who is going to read a magazine to be informed of their purchase, or be swayed by a salesperson, into buying whatever is going at the time, which possibly isn’t going to be the best product anyway. So I don’t think it will matter what the branding is for end users like that.

Geeks like us are going to research, read, and peer-review to find what the best product really is, and buy it regardless of brand name. Good products get the geek vote, not brand name.

Personally, I’m less-concerned about the label on the front, and more concerned about where the development talent is coming from. If it has Cisco know-how inside, then it’ll be great, regardless of branding.

However, if it’s called a Cisco, and only has mediocre home-user-directed talent underneath the brand name, that will do nothing but reflect badly on Cisco, and I don’t think they’ll want that to happen.
hap

August 2nd, 2007 at 10:45 am
4

I’m starting to feel old. If you haven’t been around long enough to view anything labeled Linksys with skepticism, you’re lucky. My experiences with Linksys have often been bad. Not from a hardware quality standpoint but in software and drivers. It got to the point that we just threw Linksys ethernet cards in the trash and opted to buy 3Coms instead. It was that bad, and they weren’t $10/card back then.

btw, Linksys is also behind the NetworkEverywhere brand which is absolutely the worst stuff I’ve ever used.

As for the main question, I would probably buy more consumer stuff from Cisco if it carried the Cisco name. I would trust Cisco not to cut corners when their name is the primary name on a product.
Chris

August 2nd, 2007 at 5:35 pm
5

Im for keeping it. I don’t see why Cisco would want their name involved unsavy home users are bitching about their routers not working. Cisco is associated with high end enterprise class equipment. IT people know what you get when you buy Cisco and I think using the Cisco brand for everything (including home equipment) could tarnish the brand.
Chris

August 2nd, 2007 at 5:37 pm
6

To address comment #4, if they indeed inproved the quality of the devices when using the Cisco name that would be ideal, however can they do that and still keep them cheap? Which is kinda what Linksys is known as being.