Technology has come a long way; it has done a lot of amazing things and brought us to great lengths. But that’s not without some bumps in the road. The industry is an unfair hit or miss, if it sells well enough, you will PROBABLY be labelled as a genius. If it doesn’t, you will SURELY fade to obscurity. It’s like what they say in comedy sketches: A good sketch kills, a bad sketch dies
I won’t be too harsh with these 5 gadgets; I’ll just call them poor judgment. But…. let’s poke a little fun out of it, shall we?
MICROSOFT ZUNE
It was too late for Microsoft to match the iPod boom of the mid-2000s, Apple was 10 steps ahead of them. The Zune-to-Zune sharing didn’t help them too; the received tracks can only be played three times on three days. The absence of an own audio/video store put the nail in the coffin. Zune was discontinued after 2011
NOKIA N-GAGE
It tried to be a smartphone and a gaming console at once… and failed on both miserably. The price was a pretty steep $299. Gamers were hassled by the need to remove the back cover in order to swap games. By 2010, N-Gage was dis-n-gaged.
OAKLEY THUMP SUNGLASSES
It has signs of flopping right from the start. Buyers seemed reluctant because you cannot hear the music without putting the shades on. Also, for an MP3 with a 256MB memory, $495 was a bit overpriced, and it’s not exactly the best looking sunglasses in the world.
MSN DIRECT SMARTWATCH
This was made by watch business powerhouses Fossil and Swatch. It brings you feeds of news, weather, sports updates, and stocks quotes via radio waves. Sadly, smartphones can do all of those and more… and better. The device headed to irrelevancy soon after.
SEGWAY
Inventor Dean Kamen made a bold statement by hyping it as the revolution of all revolutions. One that would change the way we live. Priced at an eyebrow-raising $5,000, the Segway did not live up to Kamen’s claims… and did not even come close. Ultimately, it proved that people did not want to be seen around using the Segway. One blogger wrote that he feared someone would yell “Too lazy to walk?!”. Currently, mall cops, some police offers, and postal workers are the only ones using it.
Like I’ve said, it’s either a hit or a miss. It’s just unfortunate that these 5 gadgets missed a little worse than the others. The job of innovating is a tough challenge, thinking “outside-the-box” is never easy and that box is getting bigger by the minute. Some do it flawlessly, some struggle, and some flawlessly struggle.
