Supposedly offering OpenH264 ended up costing Cisco more money in licensing fees. See Monty Montgomery's blog post from 2013 about the initial announcement of OpenH264:

http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/61927.html

There are a couple of comments in the comments section titled "Cisco's Costs" in which Monty says that someone he knew at Cisco told him that they had been under the licensing cap and that the OpenH264 project would increase their licensing costs.