Will iPhone 3GS Kill Flip?

Flip is one of the “coolest” gadgets on the market. Just a few years ago, if you want to start your own video blog or shoot decent videos, you needed to spend hundreds of dollars to get your hands on a decent camcorder. Flip was designed to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of people who needed a simple gadget that could record great videos. Flip camcorder and its competitors have certainly gained a lot of momentum in their market, but with the introduction of iPhone 3GS, a lot of people are now predicting doom and gloom for these devices. After all, who needs a Flip when you can record videos on your phone. Right?

Apple iPhone 3GS video capabilities may not be where they need to be to directly challenge FlipHD at this point, but that is certainly possible in the near future. The iPhone may take market-share away from Flip, but it won’t kill it. Multi-purpose devices such as iPhone can be good but not great at everything. If anything, iPhone 3GS should give mini camcorder manufacturers a wake up call. Apple may be a formidable challenge for a lot of these small companies, but they should be more than capable of coming up with features that let their device stand out in this niche. If anything, the challenge that is iPhone will help these companies become better at what they do. Besides, N95 didn’t kill digital cameras, did it?

Your take: is Flip done?