It seems like Cisco just woke up and realized that global domination of the Internet is a lot more difficult than it had realized. On the back of a major breech of trust this summer when the company automatically upgraded all their routers connected to the Internet to place a new firmware on the devices without user permission, Cisco has decided that it’s time to sell the Linksys division of its company.
According to Bloomberg:
“Cisco wants to sell Linksys as part of its strategy to exit consumer businesses while expanding in corporate software and technology services. Chief Executive Officer John Chambers eliminated 7,800 jobs over the past year and closed businesses such as the Flip video-camera unit amid a slowdown in sales growth after a foray into consumer technologies backfired.”
Of course, no one from Cisco is commenting on the situation.
Purchased for $500 million back in 2003 from Linksys, Cisco has allegedly hired Barclays to help sell off its consumer grade networking division. Rumor has it that they’ve begun knocking on the doors of a number of television companies that may be interested in the technologies.
In other news, Samsung’s getting ready to release the AirField Extreme router. It’s looks just like an AirPort Extreme, but is a “totally” unique design. For serious, but not really.
