Today Cisco shockingly announced that they would be discontinuing the Flip Video Camera line that they had purchased from Pure Digital for 590 Million dollars a couple of years ago. Rumors point towards Cisco working on cameras for mobile devices in the near future.

What kind of role did Apple play in the demise of Flip cameras? While cameras on the previous generation had been sub-par, the iPhone 4 had a very superb camera that could both take amazing pictures while also capturing 720p HD video. To most people, having an HD camera in 720p is much more valuable than having two devices, even though the Flips captured 1080p video.

The growth of cameras on mobile phones ultimately did cause the demise of the Flip as people would much rather have one thing in their pocket that shoots HD video rather than having an iPhone and a Flip. The addition of iMovie on the iPhone has additionally made capturing video on the iPhone much more rewarding as people can easily edit their clips together on their phone and then directly upload them to YouTube or Vimeo.

While the Flips were ultimately the most popular and the “Apple” of the handheld camera industry, they were far from the best cameras, as offerings from Kodak and other brands often out did the Flips in terms of video quality.

Are you sad to see the end of Flip?