My fave Xmas present this year was the Flip Mino.

For a good while now I’ve been thinking about buying a video camera and was settling on something like the Canon HF10 packed full of features and with a price tag at over £500. Then along comes Santa with a Flip Mino costing a little over £100 and with a feature set so limited it doesn’t come with a manual.

On paper these products are not at all comparable, but I now have a more usable and superior camcorder for my needs for a fifth of the price.  As a result, I think the maker of the Mino, Pure Digital Technologies, is disrupting the traditional digital camcorder business. More on that later, but first what’s the Flip Mino like?

It’s extremely quick and easy to get recording.  Press the ‘on’ button and then the big red record button on the back of the Mino and you’re off. You can zoom, but there are no options to change other record settings.  You get video at 30 fps and at VGA resolution and that’s it.   That’s easily good enough for the web (see video example I shot with the Flip Mino below) and not bad on TV playback either.

Getting video off the Flip is very straightforward.  Plug the built-in USB connector into your Mac or PC and use the Flip Share software to transfer or edit videos.  Uploading to video sharing sites is a breeze.

Any gripes? A couple. The touch sensitive buttons on the Flip are not that touch sensitive (!) esp. on zoom which can be irritating.  The Flip Share software runs slowly on my iBook G4.  That’s pretty much it on the negative side.

So why is this such an exciting product and is it going to disrupt the likes of Canon, Sony and JVC?

Well, the Flip Mino does fulfill a number of the key criteria for being a disruptive product as defined by Clayton M. Christensen, i.e  a good-enough, low-cost solution to a job that enough people are trying to get done that creates a new market at the low end of an established market. Specifically:

1. It creates demand from non-consumers (people like myself) who haven’t previously owned a camcorder.  The Mino is very affordable and simple to use and therefore accessible to consumer segments put off by the complexity and cost of the established camcorder market. On a related note, Adam Richardson has posted a good discussion of product simplicity and how it affects consumer adoption that also references the Flip.

2. It helps consumers do more easily and effectively a task they were already trying to do by other means.  In this case, record and share ad hoc moments online anywhere they want, when they want.  Before the Flip the three main options were:

- the limited video capability on a mobile phone or digital camera – available as a secondary or tertiary feature and often hard to really use

- the bulky, feature-rich camcorder that could be wheeled out for set-piece occasions

- or webcams that tied you to the computer.

Flip is not alone in this new market – Kodak’s Zi6 pocket video camera targets a similar set of needs.  But both Kodak and Pure Digital Technologies are new entrants in the camcorder business – the incumbents have not yet responded.  This is classic behaviour in markets experiencing disruption.  Sony, JVC, Panasonic and Canon appear content to continue competing amongst themselves on levels that are no longer or marginally relevant to most consumers, e.g. recording format, storage capacity, power of zoom and video resolution.  In so doing, they have missed the needs being addressed head on by the Flip and Kodak Zi6 in a different part of the market.

However, like all good disruptors, Pure Digital Technologies is moving up market by adding incremental innovations to its product set that pose a more direct threat to the established players in their mainstream camcorder market.  The new Flip Mino HD records higher resolution video (1,280×720-pixel) at 30 fps in 16:9 widescreen format, whilst at the same time retaining the ease of use, low price point and form factor that makes it so disruptive in the first place.

I just wish I had one of these new HD Flips.  But that’s OK.  When it’s available in the UK this year I can give the old one to my partner and keep the HD version for myself .  And this also shows just how much the camcorder market will change – it’ll no longer be just Dad who has one, but everyone in the family can have an affordable personal camcorder in their pocket.  If the incumbent consumer electronics giants don’t wake up to this new market reality (and massive growth opportunity) soon they will really suffer. Anyone remember DEC, the once dominant player in the mini computer market disrupted by the PC?

A text book case of new market disruption and the Innovator’s Dilemma I reckon.