Belkin buys Linksys home router business

[xxMATTGxx]

Linksys, one of the biggest router companies and currently a subsidiary of Cisco, is being bought by one-time competitor Belkin. According to a press release, Belkin and Cisco have agreed to a sale of Cisco's Home Networking Business Unit, which includes employees, products, and technology along with the Linksys brand. That brand isn't going away, but the sale means Belkin will tie up a large portion of home and small business networking: the company says it will have 30 percent of that market when the sale closes.

Belkin hasn't disclosed terms of the deal, and future plans aren't spelled out in detail. For now, people with Linksys products will continue to get support, and Belkin says it wants to help "grow Linksys' market presence" in the future. Among other things, that means an expanded retail presence and unified firmware across both lines. Competitors like Netgear or D-Link, meanwhile, will have to contend with a conglomerate of two major manufacturers as Cisco ends its foray into home networking.

Source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/24/39...nit-from-cisco

I've never really liked Belkin routers.

[Kieran]

I use Belkin stuff. Never had an issue with it.

[GommeInc]

It depends if Belkin are doing one of these takeovers to eliminate the competition by removing the products in favour of their own or are taking it over because Linksys routers are decently built in comparison and will keep the teams behind the franchise to keep both Belkin and Linksys customers and users happy. I prefer Linksys to Belkin in terms of reliability, but Belkin does have a better UI in my opinion. So maybe there will be mashups?

[Chippiewill]

I've never really found router's between manufacturers significantly different anyway, although I've never had a bad experience with belkin.

It depends if Belkin are doing one of these takeovers to eliminate the competition by removing the products in favour of their own or are taking it over because Linksys routers are decently built in comparison and will keep the teams behind the franchise to keep both Belkin and Linksys customers and users happy. I prefer Linksys to Belkin in terms of reliability, but Belkin does have a better UI in my opinion. So maybe there will be mashups?

I imagine it's both to eliminate competition and to get the best of both line-ups. A mashup seems likely as the linksys software will probably be based off of Cisco's business and they'll want the linksys routers to stop using that I imagine.

[scottish]

Had a few issues with a Belkin router (N1 Vision) which had to be replaced like 3 times but other than that not had an issue with belkin products.

[Recursion]

So is Linksys going to make Belkin better, or is Belkin going to make Linksys worse?

Oh dear...

[peteyt]

So is Linksys going to make Belkin better, or is Belkin going to make Linksys worse?

Oh dear...

Hopefully the first. I'm sure they've probably well hopefully bought them to improve themselves