In a roundtable with the European press, Mr. John Chambers, the chairman and chief executive officer of Cisco, has confirmed the “end of life” of the Linksys name.
The Linksys brand will be replaced by the new and redesigned Cisco branding.
According to UberPulse:
This decision follows Cisco’s move last April to make it easier for Linksys resellers to add Cisco products to their offerings and vice versa.
Also, just a few weeks ago, Cisco created a new division solely focused on the SMB market and headed by Rick Moran, formerly marketing chief of several Cisco communications applications like the unified communications portfolio, Cisco IPICS, Cisco Small Business Systems (Linksys One), TelePresence, Business Video and Physical security.
On Cisco’s decision to integrate consumer products into the Cisco brand, John Chambers noted that the reason that the Linksys brand name was kept was due to it being better known in the US. However, the advantage diminishes on the global consumer market, resulting in “very little advantage in [keeping it]“.
It is clear that Cisco plans a very aggressive move into consumer markets in the coming year or two.