Tech Failures: The 10 Biggest Over The Last 10 Years

The blog 24/7 Wall St. has created a list of the 10 biggest failures in the technology sector over the last decade.

To make the list:
-A product had to be widely available.
-It had to be aimed at a global market.
-It had to be either equal or superior to its competitor in the tech space.
-It had to have the potential to bring in billions of dollars in revenue.
-It had to "it had to clearly miss the mark of living up to the potential that its creators expected, and that the public and press were lead to believe was possible."

Among the big losers are Microsoft Vista, Sirius XM Satellite and the Palm electronic organizer.

• • • • • • • • • •

Microsoft Vista has been a sore disappointment. The flagship product of the world’s largest software company, Vista was created to boost the security of PC users globally. Instead, it turned out the product was barely an improvement over past versions of Windows.

Comments

[DandyWarhol]

I have Vonage in my home and it works fantastic. I can't tell you how much money we have saved calling our family in Spain.

[Dustee]

Yeah, I had Vonage for a couple of years and the best thing about it was it can operate when the computer was tuned off...not so with magicjack. But then magicjack is only $19.00 a YEAR after you get the $40.00 (including 1st year) device. Where as Vonage is 25.00 + tax a MONTH.

Since I'm on my computer everyday...what the heck magicjack is cheaper. Just plug in a regular telephone and I'm good to go.

[zenmonkman]

Soon to make the list, Twitter.

[Dustee]

I never understood the purpose of twitter. Why would I care if someone is tying their shoes now? It appears to be for nosy people with out a life.

[Diogenis]

Twitter, just another gimmick and fad.

[eposter]

The Palm was the worst technology product I ever bought. It was like writing on a thin plate of glass. I had two break within a span of 8 weeks. One fell off my desk the other out of its holster as I was getting out of the car. Glad the company paid for them not me. I got tired of losing the information.

I have a Gateway computer that's 11 years old. It has three monitors hooked up to it, CD burner, and 2 hard drives. I use it for a little of this or that. I keep it as a back up. It's outlasted three HPs.

[DonRoberto]

While YouTube may never make money as a standalone business, I find it hard to fault Google's purchase of same. In one transaction, Google has multiplied its visibility and established additional channels to market its applications and technology products.

Bottom line, the YouTube purchase was a thoughtful strategic investment, and not the failed new business venture the article seems to suggest.

[Khirad]

Oh my goodness, I'd forgotten all about Gateway! Not to start a Mac/PC war here (uggh, who cares that much?), but as a lifelong Mac user I would've never noticed!

[lawyerfan]

After going from CPM to DOS, to Windows, to Windows 95, to Windows ME and then to Windows XP, I wanted nothing to do with Windows Vista. Having to upgrade hardware with each new operating system was worth the money when the upgrades substantially enhanced the capability of the computer. But Microsoft ran out of useful improvements and began adding trinkets that most users aren't even aware of, much less find useful. I was pleasantly surprised when I was shopping for a laptop and found that Dell had decided to let consumers opt for XP rather than have to take Vista.
Maybe I'm just too old, but I don't find myself in desperate need of a palm, Ipod, iphone, satellite radio or hddvd. I got suckered into getting a new cell phone with a built in camera, thought it would be great to have, took about ten crappy pictures and never used the camera again. If I want digital photos I use a real camera, not some half-assed add-on whose only saving grace is that it's always in my pocket (assuming my battery hasn't run down).
Now, a Segway I could use. My twenty minute morning walk would only take seven minutes, and I could use the extra time to do a Google search for a discount cardiologist..

[Jon Von Vonage]

That is some subtle hilarity there! :)

[berrycooda]

So many new gadgets and software out there....

Pretty soon they will be implanting a mini phone and putting a gps chip in the
newborns ear...

Maybe some of these things don't work well because of all the imported tech
workers.....maybe they are thinking in their own language and trying to work at microsoft's new programs....

[exile]

or

maybe NOT.

[ibsteve2u]

Segway: "But its price point, ranging from $3,000 to $7,000 was simply too high"

I'll say. For that much cash, you can buy two or three functional junkers and get from "A" to "B" with a roof over your head.

[AmbivalentGuy]

I'll say.

I bought and keep a fleet of three classic
Saab Turbos going (and in the case of
the '88 900 Aero - looking goooood)
for less than $7k total. All hwy safe -
drive 2 of 3 of them anywhere -
going on 1000 mile trip in the 900
this weekend.

[ConnorMarc]

The list seems biased.

Zune's only "failure" is in marketing. And considering iPod had the masses lapping up whatever they spewed out, its no surprise. Its hard to sway people on tech stuff when they already believe they have something good, plus its a public phenomemon at this point. People use the word "iPod" to describe any MP3 Player. I was in the elevator at work yesterday and someone asked me "Is that an iPod?" and when I replied "No, its a Zune." they were like "Say whaaat?" Only one other dude, clearly in the know, smiled and left.

Linux, again seems biased or striclty money based. Although I don't use Linux, I'm well aware of its quality and reading this list now has made an appeal to me to consider it. Speaking of my laptop, I use Vista, it came with it on, and I don't see a real problem with it, its not so bad. Perhaps people need more RAM. lol!

Palm, again a product I use and I agree, they've been slipping, but I believe their on a come-up. I was just about ready to abondon it when I discoverd their upcoming Pre. This was back in Dec. or Jan and I've been waiting patiently ever since. I own a 755 currently BTW.

(to be cont...)

[ConnorMarc]

(cont...)

Vonage, well, you can't beat free stuff. Tried Vonage in the past, but didn't keep it. Wasn't due to them, its just the fact that most ppl simply don't have "home phones" and strictly use their cell phone as a "home phone." At least thats what it was for me. Skype's still free right? I should check it out too, not much of a phone talking person to begin with so thats why I never looked into it.

YouTube...WTF? Its a success to me. Again, seems to be based on the fact that they aren't making bails and bails of excessive money. As a user, I'm quite pleased with it. I'm sure the owners are happy to.

Perhaps the writer's only concerned with the bottomline, money and that is their God. Or perhaps I'm just an anti-establishment type person. But that list seemed quite biased and a bit innacurate to me.

[DavidFlores]

Not making bails of excessive money? They're losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year on the service. YouTube is tremendously popular, but no organization can sustain that sort of cash bleed for very long. Until YouTube can develop a functioning business model it's a teach failure that just hasn't taken place yet.

[whiskeytangofoxtrot451]

Umm, Linux wasn't on the list. I have a Vista laptop. It's real failure is that it just isn't any better than XP. If you want people to upgrade, you have to show at least some improvement.

Zune has a similar problem. They got into the market late after the iPod was already the dominate device and they just didn't have anything better. No reason at all to get people to switch. Plus, the fact that their older versions all crash this past January didn't help either.

I used to own a Palm. They have the opposite problem that Zune has. They were once the dominate model, but they got sideswiped by Blackberry, which is a superior product. Palm has been desperately trying to catch up for years now and they just haven't made it.

And the problems facing Youtube, Vonage, and XM Sirius are not that they're bad products. They're actually all very good. They just don't have a business model that makes money. Google spends billions just to maintain Youtube's bandwith and are only making a fraction back in ad revenues. And while XM Sirius have attracted a lot of high-priced talent, they overestimated the potential of paid radio in an era when people can now hook their iPods to their car stereoes.

[AmbivalentGuy]

Linux didn't make some of the "requirements"

It's always been sort of a niche product,
and there's so many varieties of it -
including quite good open source, free.

I've been using versions for about 25 years -
starting with the old Berkley Unix.

I considered Redhat - but went with
open source.

Have Vista on my laptop - haven't had a problem really.
It's a kludgy startup, but ok for a low demand user like
me.

[Techboy308]

I've been saying that for years. Why would anyone even listen to FREE radio when they can stream music and podcasts from their Ipod. Traffic reports maybe...

[RuWii]

"Zune's only "failure" is in marketing."

Well, that was sort of the point of the list. poor market penetration and profits despite hype and expectations.

[cplKlyde]

I bought my daughter a Zune three years ago and she loved it. When her laptop went belly up she bought a MAC. Unfortunately the Zune is not Apple compatible so it became a paperweight. I bought her an 8 gig Ipod for her birthday and she gave me the Zune. I love that thing. If Microsoft would actually push it and display it's features properly I think it could still be a hit.

[PaiaGirl]

Microsoft puts so many gotchas in its products that most of us shy away from them now. If you Windows gets messed up, better you buy a new computer than attempt to re-install it. Any mp3 player that doesn't instantly attach to any computer had to have been deliberately broken by its manufacturer.

[zenlikejen]

I must be one of the last couple of people on the planet without an iPod - nor do I want one. I have managed with my cheapo mp3 player I got 3 years ago that's easy as pie to use. My daughter won one of those tiny clip-on iPods and I helped her download the software you have to use to load the frickin thing.....OMG - I wanted to pull my hair out! I simply do not get the appeal of the thing other than fulfilling the need to be like everyone else on the planet.

[ToHoJo]

The problem isn't the Zune, it's the iPod jungle. For many iPod owners, it was their introduction to mp3's, and they now have all of their music in iTunes, organized into playlists, rated, with play counts; and even purchased some from the iTunes Store.

Switching to the Zune would require rebuilding all that meta-data from scratch, and not being able to take those DRM'd songs with you (I'm aware that new songs are DRM free, but not the old ones). It'll take a very compelling device for people to make that switch, and it would require Apple to pretty much stop development on the iPod for a few years.

Not going to happen.

Escaping from the vertically integrated iTunes ecosystem is like escaping from the Vertically integrated MS business/enterprise ecosystem.

[Puffin16]

I love my satellite radio and think it is well worth the money. I don't like chatter, giggling, commercials, and pundits. I do like uninterrupted music. I hope it doesn't go away.

[aaronr2000]

I totally agree. I'm puzzled as to why they're loosing so much money. Is it because overhead is very expensive?

I heard the ipod is what's really killing it. I'm embarrassed to say this as a techy myself but I just bought my wife an iphone and haven't yet figured out how to harness all of its potential.

[zenlikejen]

I always assumed it as the outrageous salary they pay Stern....

[BassMent]

I love Sirius XM. In the two years that I've had my subscription, I can't count the number of artists I've learned about through satellite radio. iPods are great for stuff you already know about and like well enough to carry around with you. But if you listen to nothing but your iPod your musical horizons are going to expand much more slowly.

Ollabelle, The Low Anthem, Sierra Hull, Fleet Foxes, Blue Mountain... heck, I probably never would have heard of any of these if they hadn't popped up on Sirius shows that I like. And now they're all among my favorite artists.

It seems wierd to me that people are willing to pop $1 per song on iTunes without flinching, but think that spending $15/mo for hundreds of channels streaming cd-quality music is exhorbitant. Makes no sense (as I'm sure it doesn't to the people who invented satellite radio and thought they'd make a bundle).

[wingnutslayer]

Sirius/Xm actually made me passionate about radio again after a good quarter century. Outlaw Country, Underground Garage, Deep Tracks, The Loft, Bluesville. There truly is something for everyone who wants to try something new or hear older music that the corporate music industry has ignored for the sake of just young listeners exclusively. Sirius/XM went wrong by paying out big bucks for celebrity DJ's, mainly the useless Howard Stern, who are a detriment to the more music less mindless blather philosophy that should be the focus. If you want to listen to no-talent shock jocks you can get that for free. Start by firing Stern. I'd be willing to bet they don't lose as many subscribers as they think they might.

[zenlikejen]

No kidding!! Stern is such a waste of funds. 1st Wave, OutQ and the Chill channel are my faves and you are right about getting people who love music back into it - something for everyone!

[zenlikejen]

I've had Sirius for about 5 years now and would NEVER go back to terrestrial radio. LOVE it.

[Cloud7Raymaker]

It's hard to justify paying a monthly subscription for chat-free broadcasting when (as mentioned previously) so many people are listening to Ipods instead. About the same time satellite radio came out I replaced our car radios with DVD-mp3 players - with something like 15 hours of music time to a single DVD I stopped listening to radio broadcasts all together during my 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day commute. And unlike satellite, Ipods & other storage devices are searchable if there's a specific song or playlist you want to listen through.

[Khirad]

Car: iPod. Home: Free streaming underground radio or Pandora plus iTunes. I like to be in control driving and not at the whims of some disc jockey.

[FrTown]

Microsoft is a stubborn stubborn company. The day they re-write their whole OS based on Unix, they will have a stable platform to brag about.

[RuWii]

yep. They ripped off Unix once (DOS), might as well do it again.

[FrTown]

Palm had a good run. It's time to fold. They did not do anything wrong. Technology like that of iPhone and Samsung just made them obsolete.

[ChuckDarwin]

I've got a one-word response to that: Pre.

[FrTown]

My boss had one of those satellite phones. At $10 a minute, he could hardly justify the expensive gadget to the company.
I mean, where on earth could he go for business where there are no cell phone towers?!?!?!

[ToHoJo]

The market is limited to Maritime, north/south pole research, drug production­/transport­, and mining/natural resource gathering - pretty much everywhere else has regular cell coverage now.

That's why Iridium failed so hard - from the time they started to the time they deployed sats, cell towers went from 'major-metro only' to 'just about everywhere.'

[FrTown]

$100 million spent to develop the Segway; That's a lot of pizzas and goofing around in a 'relaxed and creative' environment by spoiled over-confident design engineers for re-inventing a gyroscope.

[CeeAyy]

Apparently you don't get the gist of the article. The failure of the tech product had nothing to do with the engineers. They produced what they were paid to produce. As a matter of fact, it works well.

Blaming the failure on the engineers is unwarranted and is just plain incorrect. Besides, since when do intellectuals perform better in a stressful environment while being underpaid? As for being overpaid... do you even know what they were paid? Was that the only product they were paid to work on? How do you know what a fair wage for them would be?

As for being over-confident... where do you get that from? They produced what they expected to produced. If they had failed to produce then you MIGHT have a point.

Did you get beat up by an engineer in high school? Did a tech take your girl at the beach and kick sand in your face? Are you a failed engineer? What do you have against that profession, or more specifically, what do you have against the makers of the Segway?

[FrTown]

You're missing my point. It was meant in a sarcastic way. I am a design engineer myself and I envy their work environment. My office is very much like that of Dilbert. But spending that much money was a little over the top. Do the math, they barely broke even. When they first introduced the product on Good Morning America (I think) calling it by its code name "it", they made it sound like they invented a totally revolutionary transportation vehicle. It is not and never will be.
It is basically a stand up wheel chair!

[FrTown]

On the other hand, you are a lousy and impolite debater.

[carlgt1]

>>Did a tech take your girl at the beach and kick sand in your face

you must not be an engineer because that is a damn unlikely scenario! ;-)