Cisco's tablet shakes up the space

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Cisco has surprised the world yet again, announcing at the company’s Cisco Live 2010 conference on Tuesday that it would come out with its own tablet, called “Cius,” aimed at corporate users and singularly-focused on delivering high-quality video conferencing.

The specs include a docking station with HD audio and DisplayPort allowing users to plug in either a phone or a regular wired internet connection, options for 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, 3G and even 4G, a high resolution screen, a 720p HD forward facing video camera for video conferencing, a five megapixel rear facing camera, Bluetooth, Micro-USB and USB ports, all running on Intel’s 1.6-GHz Atom processor.
The purported eight-hour battery in the Cius is “detachable and serviceable” and lest we forget, the seven inch 1.15lb tablet  also runs Google’s Android operating system, will allow apps to be accessed using a SaaS model and will sport a hefty price tag of about $1000 when it starts rolling out in the third quarter of 2010.
Cisco seems to be taking aim less at Apple’s iPad and more at Research In Motion Ltd.’s (RIM) rumoured BlackBerry Tablet.
With the Cius’ suite of enterprise class, interoperable telepresence tools, HD video streaming, multi-party conferencing and the ability to produce, edit and share content stored locally or on the cloud, Cisco’s offering sounds like a killer business tablet rather than a consumer frivolity.
Indeed, Cisco CEO John Chambers admitted his firm wants to be the next big thing for corporate communication by combining “voice and data communications on networks over a common Internet Protocol architecture.”
So just how worried should various tablet makers be at Cisco’s surprise entrance into the market? Should Apple be quaking in its designer boots? “It depends on how Cisco names and positions it,” analyst Rob Enderle told RCR Unplugged. “Recall Cisco co-owns the iPhone name (they had it first) and if Cisco wanted to it could do some interesting things with how it advertises this,” he said.
Having said that, Enderle pointed out that Apple hadn’t really shown much interest in the enterprise market Cisco was targeting, and that Microsoft had much more to worry about.
“Business is Microsoft’s core target market and Cisco gives the Android platform the legitimacy Google needs to move into this segment,” he explained giving the example of how a vastly younger Microsoft used IBM to move into this market years before. “Google could do the same with Cisco and that could be very frightening to Microsoft,” he posited.
As for Dell, whose Streak also runs Android and has a seven inch version set to launch soon, Enderle again doesn’t see the firm threatened by Cisco. “Dell is business as well but has shifted much of its efforts to the mid-market where Cisco doesn’t play well,” he told us adding that Cisco’s embracing of Android could even give the Streak a boost by validating Android as a platform in business which could actually help more than hurt Dell’s own Android efforts.
RIM, by all accounts is the firm with the most to lose by Cisco’s announcement. “RIM hasn’t entered the tablet space yet but will shortly and this should dramatically reduce RIM’s available market for Tablets if it is successful,” Enderle suggested.
While this might be true, if RIM can still manage to cajole companies into integrating its upcoming tablet into their already existing IT infrastructure for less money, its tablet still has a chance. After all, what serious business person doesn’t have a Blackberry these days?
Jack Gold of Gold Associates says he believes Cisco’s Cius will be “less disruptive to the market than one might think.”
“Cisco clearly has been moving more into the consumer side of things over the past couple of years and although this is a full blown Android tablet with an Atom chip, its relatively small screen size, and its relatively high price will likely keep it more confined to enterprise use for specific tasks, especially when linked in with Cisco’s capability in Unified Communications and Telepresence,” he told us.
Gold does not see the tablet as a direct competitor to the iPad or any other tablet to date, but rather as an “extension to Cisco’s ambitions to become the central point for communications in the enterprise, and eventually in the consumer space as well.
“It could also be a good device for Cisco’s energy management initiatives and It could couple very nicely for consumption of data from its Flip devices,” he added.
As for the implications of a Cisco/Google team up, Enderle says the partnership will “help Google create an enterprise brand and become a trusted vendor for large business years before the firm would have been able to accomplish this alone.”
It also has implications for cloud computing, because if it works well this will be a huge boost for Cloud computing and potentially business VOIP phones. “Done right this could begin the rapid ramp to a desktop cloud model years before it otherwise would have happened,” Enderle continued.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Enterprise is quite ready for a killer tablet just yet. Perhaps, muses Enderle, when the segment is ready, others will have already entered the space and “figured out how to steal back this emerging market.” Still, it will likely be one of the more important technologies driving a change to appliance computing in the enterprise, he said.
Where can Cisco go from here?  “I’m expecting Cisco’s spin on a business iPhone next,” says Enderle, only half-joking, “The firm is in the phone business after-all now.”
Gold seems to concur, concluding, “I also see this as Cisco’s first step into this space and depending on how well it works out for the company, there will likely be follow on devices.”