Cisco VP: Life of Linksys brand ‘shorter than you think’

The time that it will take Cisco to kill off the Linksys brand “will be shorter than you think,” says Cisco VP of SMB Solutions

Marketing Rick Moran, as quoted in Tuesday’s IDG News Service story.  The evolution is likely to happen first outside the U.S., where Linksys products are sold but Cisco hasn’t spent any money building up that brand. Today’s story is the closest that any report has gotten to pinning down a timeframe for the disappearance of the Linksys brand. Cisco officially buried the Scientific-Atlanta brand just a month ago, and the division is now called the Cisco Service Provider Video Technology Group.

Cisco’s first official muttering that it would kill off the Linksys brand was during a roundtable last July with Cisco CEO John Chambers and a group of European journalists, a video of which was posted on YouTube. However, Cisco spokesmachine moved quickly to muffle the excitement saying that Linksys “will continue to be marketed under the Linksys brand and co-exist in the market with Cisco branded connected home products over the near term.” The “near term” is apparently not going to be lasting much longer.

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