In a blog post this week, Cisco revealed that the company will no longer be producing the Cius. The enterprise-focused tablet was released last year but never caught on with business consumers, who are increasingly opting for Apple's iPad, and other competitors to a lesser extent, as a mobile computing solution.
Shortly after adding social networking, Wikipedia and check-in features to its iOS Streetpilot onDemand app, today Garmin announced the addition of Google Street View in the Navigon app for iOS, and an Active Lane Assistant feature in the Android version. In addition, the company announced that it will soon make the Navigon app available for Samsung's Bada OS for the Samsung Wave 3, and also for Cisco's Cius business tablet.
Cisco has plans to follow up its enterprise-oriented seven-inch Cius tablet with at least two potential successors, CNET learned. A larger and smaller version are due in the spring and fall of next year, respectively. The current tablet uses Android but is optimized for business use with a slew of security software. It also docks into phone stations for desk use.
The Cisco Cius tablet that went on pre-order back in April will ship this summer, Verizon announced on Wednesday. The pro Android tablet will initially, however, only be available to Verizon's enterprise and government customers. It will be the Wi-Fi version of the slate, with no built-in 3G or 4G.
Cisco has launched a new app platform for its enterprise-centric Cius tablet. Its new AppHQ includes a relatively small collection of both free and paid apps. The new app ecosystem is also designed to allow companies to create private, custom branded application storefronts for employees to find publish and download applications for business use. The AppHQ platform is developer-friendly with a range of tools being made available for developers to create enterprise apps.
Cisco both bolstered and faced setbacks its plans for tablets in the workforce with plans for an AT&T-native version of the Cius. The seven-inch Android tablet will come with HSPA+ 3G for AT&T's network but won't ship until the fall, several months after the basic version. The Cius can still handle video and voice calls both in "wired environments," using the phone dockm as well as over wireless.
The Cius business tablet introduced last June is now available for pre-order, Cisco announced on Friday. The seven-inch, Android-powered tablet can be ordered through a Cisco field agent or or resllers. The tablets will begin shipping towards the end of April and throughout May.
The Cisco Cius Enterprise tablet first announced unveiled in June 2010 is set to land on Verizon’s LTE network. The Android-based tablet is designed to leverage Cisco’s expertise in Enterprise video conferencing, as well as serve as a general purpose tablet. The two companies used CES 2011 to announce the partnership and said that the device would start shipping in March after several months of testing in real-world Enterprise contexts.
Apple is effectively already in the top five computer builders worldwide through the iPad, analysts argued today. Making the contentious claim that the tablet is equivalent to a netbook, Canalys said Apple's 3.27 million iPads were enough to give it six percent of the portable computer market by itself. Adding Macs would put Apple in the same company as ASUS, Lenovo and Toshiba for market share.
The iPad already has a footprint in half of the companies in the Fortune 100, Apple said in the call discussing its spring results. About 50 percent of the top companies are already either using or testing the tablet for corporate use. Chief operating officer Tim Cook didn't have specific adoption rates but characterized the early acceptance at the workplace as "incredible."
Cisco's rumored tablet was made real today as the company confirmed the Cius, its first tablet. The 7-inch slate works as a full Android tablet with apps, but it has an especially heavy focus on Cisco's videoconferencing features. A front camera provides full speed 720p video; a back five-megapixel camera helps both for stills and for streaming 640x480 video.
