Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) has put its Scientific-Atlanta set-top-box division up for sale six years after it bought the business for $7 billion, the New York Post reports. Quoting an unnamed source, the paper said Cisco is shopping the business, most likely looking to sell to private equity firms.
Cisco declined to comment on the report.
The Post postulates that Cisco is exiting what it sees as a business in decline, planning instead to focus on its Videoscape product that it rolled out at CES in January 2011. Videoscape was built using technology Cisco acquired from Scientific-Atlanta as well as three other firms it acquired in 2011, Inlet Technologies, ExtendMedia and BNI Video.
Cisco last July, as a part of CEO John Chambers drive to trim $1 billion in expenses by trimming its workforce and shedding under-performing businesses, sold a key Scientific-Atlanta STB manufacturing facility located in Juarez, Mexico to Foxconn Technology Group. The sale closed late last year. Cisco said the deal "brings Cisco's video equipment manufacturing in line with the company's overall strategy of partnering with world-class contract manufacturers to deliver the highest-quality products to customers."
Videoscape is Cisco's vision of TV for the future, bringing together digital TV and online content with social media and communications applications to create what it considers an immersive home and mobile video entertainment experience.
Although Videoscape includes a set-top box and will help pay-TV operators stay relevant in a consumer space that is rapidly evolving to demand more over-the-top content, it is equally about merging the video flow into a single, high-quality stream--with Cisco at the helm.
Chambers earlier this month said the company has seen strong demand for Videoscape as more of its customers looked to offer over-the-top solutions. The company reported a 23 percent bump to its video business in its just-reported second fiscal quarter.
For more:
- see this New York Post article
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