Technology keeps advancing every year, and with those advancements, we get closer to that futuristic world we all reveled in as children. However, with every success, there are at least three failures that fall into the annals of time.
Sometimes, though, it is fun to look back on past failures to see how far we have come. In this article, we will be taking a look at some of the most epic technological failures.
We are sure that some will surprise you. Let’s get ready to check out the biggest failures in the technology industry over the past few decades.
Technology Industry Fails
There are many failed technological gadgets, apps, and gaming systems that are just waiting for someone to remember them. Here are a few that we think are worth remembering.
TiVo
Did you ever TiVo your favorite show? That is still something that many people say to this day. Although the company and its product became a verb in the lexicon of the modern world, it is still on this list.
That is not because it went out of business, as it is still very much alive. It’s on this list because it chose to be the bigger person as cable companies rolled out their DVRs and steamrolled right over the top of them.
This nice guy mentality allowed them to become just a second thought when it came to DVRs. Though they were the first ones on the market, they ended up having to sue for infringement, and even with their wins, they ended up under the boot of the larger cable and satellite companies.
Dreamcast
Sega always faced a challenge delivering gaming consoles that could stand up to Nintendo and Sony, but in 1999, they thought they had finally got it right.
The Sega Dreamcast had amazing video games, a modem for online gaming, and controllers with a second screen (innovative, right?).
Unfortunately for Sega, their struggles would end with this console, as it just was unable to beat the hype and performance of the consoles produced by its competition. Instead, they wrapped their console dreams up and stuck to what they did well with video games.
Pebble
Nowadays, when most people think of smartwatches, they think of Apple or Samsung, but these were not the first companies to produce these gadgets.
That honor goes to Pebble. In 2012, this Kickstarter-funded watch made a splash in the tech world. It came with a ton of apps and watch faces, making it easy to customize to the individual.
Even with all of that, the company was just too small to handle the competition when the big guns realized smartwatches were the wave of the future. Four years after launching, the company would sell its tech to Fitbit and disappear into the shadows.
Google Glass
Google anything typically arrives with grandiose fanfare, and the Google glasses were no different. Google opened up the PR push with an epic commercial and print campaign in the likes of Vogue and such.
However, the product just did not take off as they expected. Why, you may ask?
A set of glasses that can stream straight to your eyes seems very cool. However, the price tag may have played a part in this tech failure, along with privacy concerns because of their ability to record whatever the wearer was looking at.
This put it in a little bit of a no-go zone, but they are still being used in specific industries, just not in everyday life.
Betamax
The thing with Betamax was that it was a better product than VHS. Unfortunately, Sony didn’t market or handle the product properly, and it soon fell behind the newer, more budget-friendly VHS machine.
Betamax was better built, but with a high price tag, the everyday consumer flocked to a similar system that was cheaper. Betamax found themselves as a footnote (albeit an important one) in the history books of home video entertainment.
Summary
These are just five of the biggest tech failures of the last few decades. Though they are failures, they all played an important role in pushing technology further.
We can’t wait to see what future tech failures bring to the world and how they inspire new even better technological advancements.