Cisco Rebranding Cius Tablet as the Seeya

And another tablet bites the dust.

Cisco today said it is curtailing further investment in Cius, which announced in June of 2010 as an enterprise rival to Apple’s iPad.

“Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor, and no further enhancements will be made to the current Cius endpoint beyond what’s available today,” OJ Winge, Cisco’s senior vice president of the TelePresence Technology Group, said in a blog post. “However, as we evaluate the market further, we will continue to offer Cius in a limited fashion to customers with specific needs or use cases.”

Evidently, the Cius didn’t prove to be much of a rival to anything. And with the “consumerization of IT” taking off in enterprise and more companies embracing Bring-Your-Own-Device programs for their employees, the device was just never able to gain any momentum. Realistically, it was probably doomed from the start. By the time Cisco managed to get Cius to market, a large percentage of the Fortune 500 and Global 500 were already testing or deploying the iPad. Effectively, the niche it was intended to address had been filled. And so Cius will now be quietly laid to rest in the company graveyard, next to Umi, Cisco’s ill-starred consumer TelePresence product, and the much-loved Flip pocket video camera.