The Flip Mino: A study in market disruption
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.
Posted by Ivan Croxford on January 3, 2009
Tags: camcorders, Disruption, Flip Mino, Pure Digital Technologies
I’m a digital strategist and I like building new businesses. This blog is an opportunity for me to air some of the insights, issues and themes that I come across in the course of my work. I’d love for some/any of these to be picked up as part of the broader conversation on digital disruption.
This sounds like a very useful product, but I won’t be rushing out to buy one just yet as I already own a pseudo-market disruptor in my ixy digital camera (80 IS) – this great little camera not only takes high quality pics – ideal for anything from family snaps to attempts at being arty – but also has the same point and shoot video function the Flip has. Slap in a big enough memory card and away you go. So here you get two in one – camera and video for around £130. Now all they need to do is build in a phone.
Good point – is it a case of adding incremental features to a device or focusing on creating a very simple user experience for a specific function? On the Flip, you can take still photos from video, but I wouldn’t want to do that much. Typically on a digital camera the video capability is secondary and isn’t an integrated experience in the way the Flip has tackled it – shoot, transfer, edit, share. I suspect digital cameras and mobile phones are increasingly in the same market space, with the likes of the Flip creating a low end market alternative to mainstream digital camcorders.
Ah that brings back memories of visiting the Heath as a child! I always loved the way the house glowed like that in the right light.
The Flip is a great case of taking on products that are “too good” and which as a result have become too big, too complicated, too expensive, too fragile. The large video files created by camcorders is an impediment to sharing. The relatively small files from the Flip are lower quality, but that makes them much easier to do something with. Very few people every edit video off a camcorder (especially those with kids…the target audience of most camcorders…they just don’t have time). So the Flip is perfect for that.
It will be interesting to see whether they can sustain their position and hold off cameraphones and digicams. The key will be in post-capture – the technology for the capture itself will be too widespread.
Yep, the fact that Flip makes it simple to actually do more with video than squint at the small LCD screen on a camcorder is to its great advantage.
It’s going to be interesting to see the knock-on effects of the adoption of low cost camcorders on increased online video usage and bandwidth consumption as sharing becomes as important as shooting video.
(and yes, Hampstead Heath is really beautiful (but bloody cold!) at the moment)
Any thoughts on the new Nikon Coolpix P90? The 24x optical zoom looks fun.