Cisco selling refurbished Linksys directly to end users

Is this a new market transition for Cisco?

It appears Cisco has successfully made the market transition to selling refurbished Linksys directly to end users, according to Cisco:

Linksys by Cisco Certified Refurbished Product

Refurbished product are mostly customer returns that meet original factory specifications. These products have been fully tested, upgraded to latest firmware, and certified by Cisco-Linksys technicians via Linksys ISO certification procedures. These products may have minor cosmetic blemishes that do not impact their performance or overall product look integrity. Limited warranty and technical support period is ninety (90) days for refurbished product sold in the United States.

3 months after Cisco registered the shoplinksys.com domain name to sell refurbished Linksys, Cisco merged the Linksys channel partner program into Cisco's registered partner tier.

Interestingly on the same website, Cisco is also offering its new home media ensemble too:

However, the New York Times reported earlier this week about the Linksys by Cisco Wireless Home Audio System:

"The company has not yet advertised the product. And Cisco shouldn’t until it works out the kinks. To insure that my wireless network would not be a problem, I set up the Director unit in the same room, about 10 feet from my router. But it still took several tries for the unit to find my network, and it did so only after I restarted the Director. Then it froze. I did notice a pronounced delay between the time I altered the volume on the remote and when I actually heard the volume change. Similarly, after selecting a song from the menu, the track would not play for several seconds. And several times, a song would begin while the cover art for the previous song, as well as the time elapsed, remained for several seconds."

View Cisco's flash promotion for its home media ensemble.

What's your take, is Cisco getting ready to sell its refurbished gear directly to end users too?

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• Cisco
• LANs / WANs
• SMB
• Certified by Cisco-Linksys technicians via Linksys ISO certification procedures
• Cisco has successfully made the market transition to selling refurbished Linksys directly to end users
• Cisco is also offering its new home media ensemble
• Cisco merged the Linksys channel partner program into Cisco's registered partner tier
• Cisco registered the shoplinksys.com domain name to sell refurbished Linksys
• Cisco shouldn’t until it works out the kinks
• Is Cisco getting ready to sell its refurbished gear directly to end users too?
• Linksys by Cisco Certified Refurbished Product
• Linksys by Cisco Wireless Home Audio System
• Refurbished product are mostly customer returns that meet original factory specifications
• Refurbished product sold in the United States
• View Cisco's flash promotion for its home media ensemble