npdflipvideosmall.jpgBy Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

In June, Pure Digital unveiled the Flip Mino, a still-smaller addition to their extremely popular line of flash memory camcorders. Since then, not only has Pure Digital sold its one millionth Flip, according to a new report just released by market research firm NPD Research, it now has the #1 selling camcorder in the U.S.

Take a look at the snippet from the NPD report above (click to enlarge) and you can see that not only does the Flip Ultra hold the #1 spot in June of this year, the Flip Mino, which was just introduced in June, is already at #6.

If you take a look at the full report (download the draft version of NPD’s report here), when you take into account all camcorder sales for all its models, Sony has the #1 ranking, but Pure Digital ranks #2 – and the first Flip was shipped in May of last year.

In an emailed press release, Jonathan Kaplan, Chairperson and CEO of Pure Digital Technologies said:

“Flip’s simplicity makes it easy for anyone to capture and share their stories and to participate in the explosion of video-sharing on the web, and that has been a winning approach with consumers. Our goal was to make video fun again and we transformed the camcorder market in the process.”

Full disclosure: we own a Flip Ultra camcorder. And a testament to how successful Pure Digital is at its goal of “making video fun again” is that my wife, a decided technophobe, picked up the Flip, played with it, and deemed it the simplest, easiest to use camcorder she’s ever seen. She loves its simplicity, its sleekness, and (yes) its cuteness.

As she said, you don’t have to expend mental energy on a new technological skill or know-how that isn’t even that important.

Yeah, she’s not like me. For me, it passed a similar test. I picked it up and was able to use it sans manual. Typical of a technophile, it doesn’t always work out, but it sure did here. And that’s what Pure Digital is aiming for: a camcorder that just does what its supposed to, easily and with no fuss. Good for them.