The fastest growing company in Silicon Valley over the last few years was not Facebook, VMWare, or all-mighty Google. According to Deloitte, the professional services firm, it was a company whose name you probably won’t recognize but whose product you will: Pure Digital Technologies, maker of the popular Flip video camera.
In a study released last month, Deloitte said that revenue at Pure Digital, a 90-employee company based in San Francisco, grew 44,667 percent, the highest rate in Silicon Valley over the last five years. Pure Digital says it has sold over 1.5 million devices since it first unveiled its Flip product line in 2007.
This week, Pure Digital is showing how it achieved that distinction and carved out the leading share of the camcorder market: the company is unveiling the Flip Mino HD, a 3.3 oz camcorder that captures video in crisp high-definition and allows owners to easily play clips on their televisions and upload them to video sharing sites like YouTube and MySpace.
The device costs $230 or about $50 more than the standard-definition Flip Mino and $90 more than the original Flip Ultra.
Jonathan Kaplan, Pure Digital’s chief executive, said that the Flip HD aims at a more sophisticated consumer who resists recording their child’s first steps in standard, VGA-resolution video. “This is our first product that is starting to scratch a little bit at the traditional camcorder buyer,” he said.
The story of Pure Digital Technology is a remarkable one we have told before: a company outmaneuvering the consumer electronics giants with a simple product that captures what consumers want. It designed an easy way to record, preserve and share memories instead of a device with a lot of confusing buttons that ends up sitting unused on a shelf.
The new Flip Mino HD performed well in my tests, but there is one nagging problem, not of its own making. It is actually difficult to share the great-looking video the camera records, since Web sites like YouTube and MySpace do not yet display user-uploaded clips in high definition.
Until they get there, the Mino’s HD video clips are best shared over e-mail – or among people in the same room clustered around the computer or television.
Comments are no longer being accepted.